Richard Fairbank, the co-founder and CEO of commercial bank Capital One, has received no salary for the past 23 years. Instead, the finance entrepreneur has taken his pay in the form of stock options and rewards, and hasn't done too badly at all out of the no-wage remuneration deal

In 2018, Fairbank's compensation totalled $17.5 million (£13.3m), as the Capital One reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The CEO's wealth was estimated by Bloomberg at around $1.1 billion (£836m) in January 2018 on the back of the increasing share price of the company.

Google co-founder Larry Page took home a salary of just $1 (76p) annually as CEO of Alphabet until he stepped down in December 2019. With his decision to plump his pay for a miniscule, Page followed in the footsteps of another Silicon Valley billionaire, the late Steve Jobs, who set the trend when he rejoined Apple in 1997.

Likewise, Google co-founder and – since December – former Alphabet president Sergey Brin (pictured here with Page, front) was paid $1 (76p) a year since the search engine went public in 2004, both of them also declining bonuses and stock options. However, as two of Alphabet's largest shareholders Page and Brin are worth a combined $123.6 billion (£93.9bn), according to Bloomberg.

The CEO of review platform Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, has seen his salary shrink. In 2012, he was paid $300,000 (£228k). That figure dropped to $37,501 (£28.5k) the following year. In 2014 it went down to $1 (76p).

That's not the whole story of course as the Yelp head honcho is entitled to lucrative stock options. In 2018 alone, Stoppelman, who is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was offered a total of $5.4 million (£4.1m), as the company reported to the SEC.

Another member of the $1 salary club, Mark Zuckerberg took a gigantic pay cut in 2013 when his yearly salary went from $770,000 (£585k) to a single dollar. But don't feel sorry for him just yet. The social media boss raked in $22.6 million (£17.2m) in 2018 thanks to Facebook's rising share price.

CEOs opt for this sort of drastic pay cut for a number of reasons, one of which is to appease shareholders who may frown on excessively high salaries but don't seem to mind senior execs receiving lavish performance-based share options. Zuckerberg's net worth is currently estimated at $76.7 billion (£58.3bn), according to Bloomberg.

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Richard Hayne, the boss of hip fashion chain Urban Outfitters, has drawn a $1 salary since 2010. Hayne does, however, receive a variety of benefits including performance-related rewards, and car and life insurance as well as a compensation of $1 million (£760k) in 2019.

On top of the performance-related bonuses and insurance premiums, Hayne holds the majority of the company stock, and with the Urban Outfitters share price surging, Hayne is cashing in. His net worth in December 2019 stands at $1.1 billion (£836m), according to Forbes.

WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum agreed to a $1 (76p) salary when he joined parent company Facebook back in October 2014, following its $19 billion (£14.4bn) acquisition of the popular instant messaging service.

Koum plumped instead for stock options. The Ukrainian-born tech magnate has already sold around $7.1 billion (£5.4bn)-worth of Facebook shares, and while he announced that he planned to leave Facebook in April 2018 he was still employed by the company in August, CNBC reported, in order to receive his $450 million (£341.9m) in remaining stock. As of December 2019, Koum's net worth is $10.3 billion (£7.8bn), according to Forbes.

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Staying with tech billionaires, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel saw his salary drop to nothing following his company's IPO in June 2017. The fresh-faced chief exec had been drawing a salary of $503,205 (£382k) in 2016.

Spiegel's remuneration package is largely based on stock options and rewards, so his move may not have been quite as shrewd as he hoped given Snap's struggling share price, which has trended downwards since the IPO. That said, in 2017 Spiegel received $638 million (£484.7m), which was a higher payout than any other US CEO, a remarkable fact as Snap actually lost $720 million (£547m) that year. Forbes estimates his current net worth at $3.2 billion (£2.4bn).

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Kean also forgoes an annual bonus, stock options and other CEO staples, but records show the energy infrastructure exec earned a total of $1.1 million (£836k) in 2018 in the form of other types of compensation.

From 2013 until he stepped down in late 2018, former Sears CEO Edward Lampert earned a $1 salary with zero bonuses, but he was not struggling to make ends meet. Despite his bankrupt firm's poor stock market performance over the past few years and hundreds of store closures in recent times, Lampert made a fortune.

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The former majority owner of Sears and current owner of 'New Sears' holding Transform, received just over $4.3 million (£3.3m) in Sears shares for the 2017 fiscal year, an increase of about $850,000 (£645.8k) on the previous year. Currently Lampert has a net worth of $1.2 billion (£910m), according to Forbes.

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also heads credit card processing company Square and takes home a combined salary of next to nothing for both roles. Dorsey received $1.40 (£1.06) at Twitter in 2018 – a pay raise from zero the years before – but the firm covers his security, which costs around $70,000 (£53.2k) a year.

Dorsey's salary at Square amounts to a symbolic $2.75 (£2.09), the maximum percentage the company charges merchants per transaction, down from the heady heights of $6,000 (£4.6k) per annum in 2016. Yet Forbes estimated that the CEO made $8 million (£6.1m) by selling Square stock in 2018 and says his net worth is $4.2 billion (£3.2bn).

Elon Musk's current salary stands at $56,380 (£42.8k) to adhere to Californian minimum wage regulations for CEOs, but the Tesla superstar famously refuses it. "I don't cash it in. It just ends up accumulating in a Tesla bank account somewhere," Musk told The Times. His real earnings are tied to the electric-car maker's performance – the tech tycoon makes money by hitting a number of challenging financial targets.

If Tesla achieves 12 massively ambitious "Market Capitalization Milestones" and the company surges in value to over $650 billion (£439.8bn) within the decade, the world's most innovative billionaire will be awarded a cool $55.8 billion (£42.4bn) in stock options. Forbes estimates Musk's current net worth at $23.9 billion (£18.2bn).

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