Today's CEOs Live Rich, Die Richer

Excerpts from Lavish Posthumous Paydays, a page-one story in today's WSJ:

You still can't take it with you. But some executives have arranged for the next best thing: huge corporate payouts to their heirs if they die in office.

Take Eugene Isenberg, the 78-year-old chief executive of Nabors Industries Ltd. If Mr. Isenberg died tomorrow, Nabors would owe his estate a "severance" payment of at least $263.6 million, company filings show.

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The CEO of Shaw Group Inc. is in line to be paid $17 million for not competing with the engineering and construction company after he dies.

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Companies often say one goal of their pay packages is to keep executives from leaving. But "if the executive is dead, you're certainly not retaining them," says Steven Hall, an executive-pay consultant in New York.