NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Total compensation for US chief executive officers shrank by 8.6 percent last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Boards offset some cuts in stock awards and options by boosting CEO salaries and bonuses, the data show.

With pay packages under pressure from President Barack Obama and shareholder activists, average compensation fell by 8.6 percent to $9.81 million for the 81 CEOs whose companies' proxy statements were examined. While option awards were slashed by 30 percent, cash earnings, including non-equity incentive rewards, rose 8.3 percent.

Cash became king in corner offices because boards acquiesced to CEOs' desire for dependable income, according to interviews with 15 compensation experts. Executives, whose pay packages were typically negotiated in 2008 and early last year, weren't willing to give up salaries for long-term, stock-based awards that could decline in value.

"When the economy is reeling, the most stable form of pay isn't stocks, it's cash," said Sam Pizzigati, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington who has written about executive compensation and shareholder activism. "In rough times, the surest thing is cash, and that's what they went for."

That isn't the direction preferred by the White House.

"To the extent there is more emphasis on cash than stock, that's unfortunate," said Kenneth Feinberg, the US special master on executive compensation, who was appointed by Obama in June 2009. "We're pushing the other way."

Assuming the trend holds for other Standard & Poor's 500 companies, CEO compensation may have fallen for the third year in a row. The average pay package declined in 2007 and 2008, when it was off roughly 40 percent from its 2000 high of $14.6 million, according to research by assistant finance professors Carola Frydman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dirk Jenter of Stanford University.

The proxies that Bloomberg reviewed include the most complete pay summaries that companies have ever been required to provide. For the first time, the Securities and Exchange Commission has mandated that the full value of stock and option awards appear in proxy statements covering the year in which they were given. The awards' value was divided among several years in the past.

For a look at how S&P 500 CEOs fared under the new disclosure rules, Bloomberg compiled data from proxies for companies whose fiscal years ended on December 31, 2009, and that had been filed as of March 12. For comparison purposes, only CEOs serving in that capacity in 2008 and 2009 were included.

Printer maker Lexmark International Inc., based in Lexington, Kentucky, cited challenging economic conditions in its proxy as the reason for freezing salaries. The CEO of Morris Township, New Jersey-based Honeywell International Inc., David Cote, 57, requested that he not be awarded a bonus because of the recession. Directors agreed — and his total pay was reduced by 57 percent.

Compensation committees also exercised caution to avoid criticism, said Tim Smith, a senior vice president at Walden Asset Management, a money manager in Boston.

"The hot spotlight of public attention is on companies more than ever," Smith said.

The 20 financial institutions among the 81 companies cut CEO compensation in 2009 by almost $28.1 million to $176.1 million — accounting for 37 percent of the overall pay lost. Eleven were banks that received money from the Troubled Asset Relief Programme and had to adhere to federal guidelines that restricted cash bonuses for top executives.

Vikram Pandit, CEO of New York-based Citigroup Inc., voluntarily slashed his annual salary to $1 in February 2009. His package exceeded $38 million in 2008, when the bank's stock price fell 77 percent. Pandit, 53, vowed not to take a raise or receive incentive compensation until Citi — 27 percent owned by the US — returns to profitability.

At Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp., Kenneth Lewis received no cash, bonus or equity compensation in 2009. Lewis, 62, retired on December 31.

Not all TARP recipients showed restraint. Last August, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co.'s compensation committee approved upping CEO John Stumpf's base salary more than fivefold to $5.6 million, all but $900,000 of which was awarded in shares that vested over the rest of the year.

Stumpf, 56, received a total pay package of $21.3 million, 136 percent more than in 2008. It was boosted because TARP rules made the bank unable to "reward him appropriately" in other pay categories, said Melissa Murray, a spokeswoman for the bank.