Company News: Tech, Pfizer, YouTube, Neiman Marcus, Electronic Arts

Five of the ten highest-paid chief financial officers in 2012 hail from the technology industry, according to compensation data compiled by Bloomberg. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned the most in fiscal 2012, with a $68.6 million package that dwarfed the $4.17 million awarded to his boss, Tim Cook. Oracle CFO Safra Catz was second at $51.7 million, while Patrick Pichette at Google was No. 3, with $38.7 million. Their outsized pay packages rewarded success in increasing profit, amassing cash, and minimizing taxes. Tech CFOs are largely compensated with company stock, so their payouts have expanded as equity prices have boomed.

Pfizer started selling its impotence drug Viagra through a company-sponsored website to combat counterfeit versions being marketed online. Customers can order the drug at Viagra.com, and the prescriptions will be verified and fulfilled by CVS Caremark. In 2011 a Pfizer analysis of pills purchased from 22 websites found that roughly 80 percent of the pills claiming to be Viagra were counterfeit and didn’t contain full doses of the active ingredient as advertised. Pfizer’s sales of the drug totaled $2.05 billion in 2012.