Here is a little history of Bryson, that a lot of people may not know. He was appointed president of the CPUC by Moonbeam and Davis way back before he became CEO of Edison. (John Bryson: Green At Heart, Greener In The Wallet ) ------------------------------------------------------------
That puts Bryson on our list of the worst-valued chief executives on Forbes.com's First Annual CEO Value Survey. Bryson took home $4 million for every percentage point Edison shrank (measured by average of annualized growth in sales, income, and share price over 5 years).
While that's a comparatively modest sum of money, and it is still well under the $38 million average in five-year compensation for executives listed on the survey, it's quite an improvement from his pay as the co-founder of nonprofit environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. Rick Cavanagh, the current energy program director at NRDF, says Bryson was "just scraping by" at the organization.
"He probably made a fraction of his current salary while he was here," Cavanagh says. "I'd guess that he was probably the lowest-paid member of his class at Yale Law School for the five years after he graduated." But Bryson made up for lost time.
A Stanford grad with a Yale Law School Juris Doctorate, Bryson was a public servant for many years before joining Edison (nyse: EIX - news - people) in 1984. His environmental interests play a strong role in his past: Bryson was president of the California Public Utilities Commission from 1979 to 1982; before that he served as chairman of the California Water Resources Control Board; fresh out of school, he co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970.