UTAH'S 25 HIGHEST PAID CEOs.

• Author: Khashan, Nesreen
• Position: Statistical Data Included

A chief executive officer in Salt Lake City making an annual salary of $400,000 would need double that income to live as comfortably in Silicon Valley.

It's common knowledge that Utah is considerably more affordable than the San Francisco Bay area, Boston, New York or even Raleigh, N.C.

It should come as no surprise, then, that CEOs in Utah are not pulling in astonishing million- to billion-dollar salaries that their counterparts elsewhere in the country are earning. But according to local corporate recruiters like Lora Lea Mock, president of Salt Lake City-based Professional Recruiters, Utah's top executives do quite well. They make sturdy low- to mid-six figure salaries that provide a comfortable living in a state where annual pay is only 84 percent of the national average, and where most living costs, including housing, are reasonable.

"Sure, CEOs are making less money here but they are (also) living on a whole lot less," says Mock. "Some CEOs making $500,000 to $600,000 here could be making $1.5 million in Silicon Valley, but with that $1.5 million would come a host of lifestyle challenges. The critical issue as far as I'm concerned is providing an attractive lifestyle."

And that attractive lifestyle is just what many of Utah's top paid CEOs find enticing about Utah, regardless of what they are being paid. Take Geneva Steel CEO Ken Johnsen, a Utah native who left his home state in the early 1980s, intending to make his departure permanent. After spending a year in San Francisco following his 1985 graduation from Yale Law School, Johnsen and his family eschewed the fast lifestyle and exorbitant living costs of the Bay Area to return to Utah.

Johnsen, who ranked No. 12 on our list of top paid CEOs with an annual compensation package of $527,126, says since then he hasn't been swayed to leave Utah although he's received plenty of opportunities to earn a higher salary elsewhere.

"There's no question you can make more money outside the state," he says. But there are many benefits to living in Utah. There aren't many places were you can be close to this kind of culture and at the same time be close to great skiing and great hiking. Salt Lake City has evolved into a big city and a place where you have access to the outdoors."

Johnsen's sentiment echoes that of Money magazine's annual "Best Places to Live" issue, which last year ranked Salt Lake the best such city in the West: "Salt Lake City is safe, clean, and affordable, with magnificent access to the great outdoors. Just 20 minutes from downtown, you can enjoy the wilderness or bike the canyons. A half-hour and you're on the slopes of Alta, Deer Valley or Park City, ski resorts famous for their consistently good snow."

A TOUGH SELL?

But despite the lower cost of living and unmatched outdoor offerings as most natives who've lived outside the state know, Utah remains a frequently misunderstood curiosity to those who have never been here. Johnsen contends that while it may be a tough sell getting corporate executives to consider moving to the state, getting them to stay is easy once they see what Utah has to offer.

"We have, over the years at Geneva, interacted with many executives from out of state, who, without exception, expect Utah and Salt Lake City to be a backward kind of place," says Johnsen. "But by the time they leave, they are convinced that they would like to live in a place like Utah. They...