This paper examines the compensation of CEOs in India’s listed firms for the period 2005-06 to 2012-13. First, we discuss about the relevance of CEO compensation and then get on to the factors that may help explain variations across firms over time in CEO compensation. Indian corporate sector, traditionally different from developed countries, is dominated with family owned business group firms in which board chairman is also acts as CEO of firm and as well presence of public sector undertakings. We find that apart from firm performance factors, Tobin’s q, governance factors like Dual leadership has a significant positive impact in determining CEO compensation. Also we find that the CEOs of public sector undertakings receive far less compensation as compared to their private firms. However the presence of institutional ownership and board independence are ineffective in determining executive compensation and hence calls for critical evaluation of present corporate governance norms