And at a few companies where profits dropped, C.E.O. pay declined as well. At Ford, where earnings per share fell 7 percent, the pay of the chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, sank 29 percent. James P. Gorman, the chief of Morgan Stanley, saw his compensation fall 20 percent as both revenue and profits at the company tumbled in 2012.

J.C. Penney did not make this year’s list because it filed its proxy after the March 29 cutoff, but its board definitely sent a message to Ron Johnson, the former Apple executive who took over in late 2011 and has so far failed to turn around this troubled retailer. It cut his total compensation by almost 97 percent, to $1.9 million, and didn’t give him and several other top execs any bonus payments.

The most notable decliner in 2012 was the highest-paid C.E.O. in 2011: Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, was awarded $377.9 million in 2011 — almost all of it in stock — but in 2012, he was paid just $4.2 million in cash, too low to make this year’s list at all. The drop, however, is more a quirk in how pay is handed out than any judgment about Mr. Cook’s tenure. Because the outsize 2011 package vests over the course of a decade but was counted all at once in 2011, sizable new year-to-year awards aren’t being made in the meantime, limiting his annual totals.

The money spent on perks accounts for a relatively tiny portion of overall compensation packages, but the increase is striking because it comes even as business leaders have become more sensitive about public perceptions of compensation excesses, corporate governance experts say.

Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed in 2010, companies are now required to ask shareholders for their approval of executive pay packages. These so-called say-on-pay votes are nonbinding, but the ignominy of failing to win approval has received boards’ attention.

So in an age when shareholders can now make their collective views known publicly, it can seem downright provocative to let the company pick up the bill for lavish trips, big security entourages (more on that later) and housing subsidies.

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“It’s dumb with a capital D,” said Alan Johnson, a consultant who advises boards on how best to structure compensation packages. “You’re rubbing it in the faces of shareholders and employees. It fails the I.Q. test.”