It's getting more expensive to send off a CEO than to keep one.

The abrupt resignations of the top executives of Central Pacific Financial Corp. and Hawaiian Telcom Inc. this year is going to cost those companies hundreds of thousand of dollars more than what they paid the CEOs last year.

Despite losing $5.8 million last year because of problem loans to California homebuilders, Central Pacific said it will pay CEO Clint Arnoldus $5 million, or more than five times his 2007 pay of $983,149, when he retires at year's end.

Hawaiian Telcom Inc. gave ousted CEO Michael Ruley a $1.2 million severance package, which includes $20,000 for personal travel, $22,000 for his family's health coverage and reimbursement of up to 6 percent for the real estate broker commission on the sale of his Kahala home. During Ruley's tenure, the company lost tens of millions of dollars and thousands of residential telephone customers, and is being investigated by the state Public Utilities Commission for poor service.

"This has nothing to do with the circumstances of their leaving," said Linda Lampkin, research director with ERI Economic Research Institute, which conducts executive pay and cost-of-living studies for employers. "Even though they may be leaving on less than ideal situations, the companies are bound by what the executives' contracts say."

The severance packages for Ruley and Arnoldus were among the key highlights of an Advertiser review of the pay policies of Hawai'i's publicly traded companies. The study, based on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Hawai'i's eight largest companies, found that the average pay for a local CEO rose nearly 4.5 percent to $2.3 million last year from $2.2 million in 2006.

The 2007 average was equivalent to $6,525 per day and is more than 29 times the state's median household income.

Five of the 10 CEOs in this year's survey received pay raises but just two received a bonus last year. The bulk of the pay increases came in the form of stock options and other forms of compensation that aim to tie the executives' pay to company performance.

To be sure, the state's top bosses earned far less than their Mainland counterparts. According to ERI, CEOs of the nation's largest publicly traded companies saw their compensation increase by 20.5 percent last year to $18.8 million. The pay increase came as the companies' revenues grew by just 2.8 percent, ERI said.

For the third year in a row, Alexander & Baldwin's Allen Doane was the highest paid executive in Hawai'i, with a pay package of $8.6 million. That was up about 12.4 percent from his 2006 pay of $7.6 million.

Most of Doane's increase was performance-based as the company's stock price increased 19 percent and its earnings jumped 16 percent. A&B added that it returned $81 million to its shareholders last year in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

Doane was followed by David Cole, CEO of Maui Land & Pineapple Co., whose 2007 pay more than doubled to $4.1 million. In its proxy statement, Maui Pine said its board gave Cole more than a $1 million to compensate him for the loss in value of his stock options.

Most companies would not comment on their CEO's pay and referred The Advertiser to filings with the SEC. Here's a snapshot of what those filings say: