Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) CFO Michael Cavanagh took home $40.6 million in salary and other compensation last year, beating out the company's top executive, CEO Brian Roberts, who earned a paltry $36.2 million.

Cavanagh

The 50-year-old Cavanagh, who was poached at the beginning of 2015 to replace Michael Angelakis, also out-earned Steve Burke, CEO of Comcast's NBCUniversal unit, who had to figure out to make ends meet on compensation totaling $33.7 million. Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit's 2015 compensation was valued at $27.9 million.

The figures were released in a Friday proxy filing by Comcast. In 2015, Comcast grew revenue by 8 percent to $74.5 billion.

Cavanagh's haul was also several times larger than Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) President and CEO Thomas Rutledge, who earned a reported $16.4 million in 2015.

Was Cavanagh the highest paid executive in the cable business last year?

Last year's compensation figure for Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) Chairman and CEO Rob Marcus — last year's cable-industry salary leader with total compensation of $34.6 million — has not been publicly released yet.

Likewise, we're still waiting on the No. 4 ranked James Dolan — the Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) chief took home a package in 2015 valued at $23.7 million.

Cavanagh is, however, the highest paid CFO in the nation, according to Bloomberg.

For more:

- read this Comcast proxy filing

- read this Bloomberg story

- read this Philadelphia Inquirer story

- read this Los Angeles Times story

Related articles:

Charter's Rutledge gets a 1.6% raise to $16.4M

The 8 highest paid CEOs in pay-TV in 2014