That is just the first thing a search turned up, I personally find that chart not very informative, everything is bunched together at the bottom and obscured by

That is just the first thing a search turned up, I personally find that chart not very informative, everything is bunched together at the bottom and obscured by the large circles. And as you point out there are many complicating factors that one should consider to get a robust answer. I can not see if there is any noteworthy correlation in the chart. My point was just that you can probably tease out some idea about the relation between executive compensation and company performance from available data. Personally I would not even consider shareholder return to be a good metric to begin with, I think companies should be judged by something like customer satisfaction as this is what companies are for, satisfying the needs of customers, not making shareholders rich.