Nolan Archibald, who retired as executive chairman of Stanley Black & Decker Inc. in March 2013, was paid $52.5 million last year, almost five times more than Chief Executive Officer John Lundgren, according to company filings. That was also the highest pay among executives at 338 Standard & Poor's 500 Index companies that have filed proxy statements for last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Sheryl Sandberg, the billionaire chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., Bank of America Corp.'s Thomas K. Montag and Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s Ray Irani also were among 27 executives who received higher compensation than their CEOs last year, the data show. Archibald's compensation include a cash bonus of about $51 million tied to Stanley Works's $4.4 billion purchase of Black & Decker Corp. in March 2010.

"The future performance of Stanley Black & Decker will tell us if this bonus was for actions that contributed to the long-term success of the company or if this was nothing more than a contractual agreement entered into at the time of the merger," Frank Glassner, CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants, said in a phone interview from the company's San Francisco headquarters.