David E. Simon, the top executive at the Simon Property Group, was the second-highest paid C.E.O. last year, with $137 million. He joined the exclusive nine-figure niche occupied by Timothy D. Cook, who succeeded Steve Jobs at Apple. Mr. Cook received a package valued at $378 million. The pay of both Mr. Simon and Mr. Cook were bolstered by one-time rewards that the companies said would not be repeated, and that are tied to future company performance.

In Mr. Simon’s case, this was a stock package that will be distributed over eight years that was worth $132 million when granted last year. Like Mr. Cook’s bonus, it has already gained substantially in value.

While Apple shareholders overwhelmingly approved Mr. Cook’s compensation, Simon Property investors lopsidedly rejected Mr. Simon’s pay package at the annual meeting in May, with 73.3 percent voting against it, according to Institutional Shareholder Services. But such votes aren’t binding. That means companies can do as they want, whatever shareholders say.

The fact that there were votes at both companies shows the new power that investors have seized. Despite opposition from corporate America, the Dodd-Frank legislation mandated that public companies give shareholders a vote on compensation strategy at least once every six years. Last year brought the first onslaught of such say-on-pay votes, and this year 1,714 companies have already held them, says the consulting firm Semler Brossy. Among those, 45 companies’ pay strategies have been rejected by shareholders, up from 29 last year at this time.

The votes have had immediate impact, pushing many corporate boards to explain to investors how they reached pay decisions, and influencing some companies to rein in golden parachutes like the ones Hewlett-Packard gave its last two chiefs.

To address criticism that C.E.O. pay has become untethered from company performance, companies have been giving more bonuses in restricted stock that can be sold only if an executive manages to increase revenue or the stock price. An Equilar survey of all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index shows that the median amount of stock awarded to C.E.O.’s rose 10.7 percent from 2010 to 2011, while cash awards fell 6.8 percent.

Ira T. Kay, a managing partner at the consulting firm Pay Governance, said companies had set “hard goals” for executives that explained why they “are so motivated to run these companies very well.” He gives these pay packages some credit for the performance of American corporations, which have recovered faster from the financial crisis than the overall economy. “Maybe it has caused some issues between the 1 percent and the 99 percent,” he said. “But it has certainly made for a very strong corporate sector in the U.S.”