For the most part, the top CEOs in the Carolinas avoided getting tripped up by the economy last year.

The median compensation for top N.C. and S.C. executives increased by 3 percent last year, to $2.9 million, an annual Observer analysis of federal securities filings show. Their bonuses also grew and they still enjoyed a slew of perks.

Results of the Observer's survey come as growing numbers of Americans say they're concerned or angry about executive pay - especially as layoffs mount.

"CEO is still a bad word," said Charles Elson, head of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. "Populist anger is because of the recession, with shareholders losing a lot of wealth."

But experts believe the faltering economy will catch up with bosses of the Carolinas 50 - some of the states' biggest public companies - when pay figures for this year come out in 2010. Many measures that helped determine last year's pay were set before the recession deepened last fall.

"It's harder and harder to be a CEO right now, with all the pressure to perform in a down economy," said Mark Rosen, managing director in Charlotte for Pearl Meyer and Partners, an executive compensation consulting firm.

The Observer calculates annual CEO pay by adding base salary, bonuses, the value of stock awards, profits from exercising stock options and "other" pay, such as personal use of corporate planes. Annual proxy reports that detail compensation typically come out in the spring and reflect data from the year before, so 2009 numbers show 2008 results.

In 2007, nine Carolina CEOs took in more than $10 million.

Last year, just three people topped that mark:

•Martin Orlowsky ($15 million), CEO of Greensboro cigarette maker Lorillard Inc., who received a $10 million performance bonus tied in part to the company's spin-off from Loews Corp. last year.

•Mack Whittle Jr. ($10.5 million), who retired last year as CEO of Greenville, S.C.-based bank holding company South Financial Group Inc., which is the parent of Carolina First Bank. Whittle collected more than $4 million in severance.

•Chris Kearney ($10.3 million), CEO of SPX Corp., a diversified Charlotte manufacturer that is a Fortune 500 company.

Overall, the CEOs' pay still held up better than their counterparts. Nationally, CEOs' median compensation declined by 6.8 percent, according to a study of 208 Standard and Poor's 500 companies by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm in California.

The last time CEO compensation declined nationally was after the tech bubble burst at the start of the decade, experts said. Because certain industries, such as banking and retail, got hammered more than others last year, the recession's impact varied by the type of business a company runs.

"Through the third quarter of last year, many organizations had record years. Then everything fell off the cliff," Rosen said.

Forecast: Falling bonuses

For now, experts predict a decline in overall compensation this year as firms look to manage and set performance measures in a volatile environment. Board compensation committees often tie pay to hitting targets in such areas as revenue, profits and total shareholder return.

"Generally what you'll see in salaries for executives from 2008 to 2009 will be flat," said Tom Kelly, compensation practice leader for the Carolinas with compensation consulting firm Watson Wyatt in Charlotte. "And bonuses will definitely be down," as they are closely tied to operating performance.

Although the economy is stabilizing, companies are still making less money than in the past. In the second quarter of this year, for instance, corporate profits fell 11 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Aaron Boyd, research manager at Equilar, expects a lot of companies will reassess pay packages.

"Even if a company rebounds very quickly, there could still be a lot of people who were laid off," he said. "They don't want to see a CEO get a one-year decrease then get it all back the following year."

Executive pay clearly remains an inviting target.

In June, President Obama appointed an official to review compensation plans for top executives at banks that received government aid.

In July, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo generated outrage and headlines after highlighting nearly $33 billion in bonuses paid out last year to executives and other employees by Bank of America and other banks that received government bailout money following their own huge losses.

And a new national poll for Reuters found that 60 percent of Americans remain concerned or angry about excessive executive pay on Wall Street.

Politicians weighing in

There's plenty of activity in Congress, the White House and the boardroom aimed at reeling in executive pay, although the long-term impact is far from clear. Banks have been singled out for much of the scrutiny, but there's also been talk of spreading reforms to other industries.

This summer, the U.S. House approved a "say-on-pay" plan that would give shareholders a bigger voice by requiring companies to hold annual, nonbinding votes on executive pay packages. The bill is now before the Senate.

Congress is also considering other plans, such as compensation committee reform, and states are mulling changes, too. "There's mass confusion," Elson said. "No one knows where we're going next because of all the bills before Congress."

Setting compensation limits on all bank executives is impractical, Obama has said, because the administration would need to expand the rules to other industries. He said the government should avoid setting pay standards for companies that don't take taxpayer funding.

Even before Congress acts, the Federal Reserve is preparing to issue guidelines on how banks it regulates set pay for executives as well as lower-level employees, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

A majority of directors on corporate boards believe executive pay programs need to change because of the financial crisis, according to a Watson Wyatt survey from May.

More than a third of the 85 outside directors in the survey said their companies had reduced salary, target bonuses or long-term incentive award levels. The survey also found more than four-fifths of the directors did not think legislation and public pressure would significantly improve performance-based pay.

Inside the CEOs' checks

Other highlights from the Carolinas 50 securities filings:

•Total compensation fell by 28 percent, to $198 million.

•About a third of the companies provided such perks as personal use of corporate planes, country clubs dues and tax preparation or financial planning.

•A dozen executives received no bonuses, including Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis and Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers. Overall, however, the median bonus grew by 11 percent, to $611,132.

•Some familiar names are no longer on the list, including Wachovia Corp., which was bought last year by California-based Wells Fargo & Co. and filed no securities form detailing compensation, and phone directory publisher R.H. Donnelley, which filed for bankruptcy protection this year.

•The CEOs' average weekly total compensation, $70,445, was nearly double the average annual wage for Carolina workers.

•The Carolinas 50 includes 53 executives; four companies had two people serve as CEO during the year, and one man, Bruton Smith, ran two companies on the list.

• The number of women executives on the list dropped from three to two in 2008. Susan Ivey of Reynolds American was No. 4 on the list, with $7.9 million in compensation, and Ronee Hagen of Polymer Group was No. 34, with just over $2 million. Janet Steinmayer of Centerplate, a concessions provider in Spartanburg, fell off the list because new owners took it private in February before it disclosed pay. Steinmayer was later replaced as CEO.

•Robert Ingle of Ingles Markets again had the lowest compensation, at $192,329. All told, eight CEOs received less than $1 million.

•Of the 32 CEOs who have made the list at least three consecutive years, 11 had their total compensation increase from 2007 to last year.

•ScanSource CEO Michael Baur saw the biggest jump. His compensation nearly tripled to $5.9 million, mostly fueled by exercising stock options. He did not do that in 2007. That also was the year the Greenville, S.C., technology firm admitted it backdated the dates of some stock option grants to senior executives, increasing their potential value.

•John Cato of women's fashions retailer Cato Corp. in Charlotte had the biggest decline in compensation, an 84 percent decrease last year, to nearly $2.6 million. He had no option gains last year and nearly $15 million the year before.