Some directors this year have found the spotlight: Ray Irani at Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Ray Lane at Hewlett- Packard Co. have lost their jobs as investors expressed dissatisfaction. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lead director Lee R. Raymond faced pressure from activists when they tried to make Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon relinquish his chairman role. There was little debate over board members’ pay, however.

“By and large, people still don’t know who is on the board of most companies,” said Aaron Boyd, director of governance research at Equilar in Redwood City, California. “The CEO still takes the brunt of it.”

Companies are now required to report total compensation for directors each year and provide breakdowns of fees, stock awards and other reimbursement. The proxies include payments for duties outside the boardroom such as consultant fees or retirement income. Such expenses characterized as “other” skewed the average for half of the 11 boards with compensation over $500,000, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Retention Fee

At the top was the retention fee for William P. Foley II, a director at Jacksonville, Florida-based Fidelity National. In return for $9.5 million, he ran for re-election on the board, agreed to non-compete conditions and accepted the role of vice chairman.

Costco’s board jumped to third-best paid in the S&P from No. 210 in 2011 after the Issaquah, Washington-based warehouse- club chain paid $4.6 million to director Richard Libenson for consulting services -- $300,000 for a firm owned by Libenson and the rest in restricted stock units.

Northrop Grumman Corp.’s board was ranked fifth last year after paying $4.4 million for the security protection of Lewis W. Coleman, who has since resigned from he board. A $906,217 consultant grant to B.M. Rankin, a co-founder at Freeport- McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., helped keep the Phoenix-based company at rank No. 11.

High Multiple

“You have to really justify why one director is getting a high multiple of other directors, in particular,” said Paul Lapides, director of the Corporate Governance Center at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University. “It’s great when you look in the mirror, but it’s not great in the boardroom. Everybody only gets one vote.”

Randy Belote, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman, had no comment beyond the proxy. Eric Kinneberg, a Freeport spokesman, declined to comment. Kim Snider, vice president of marketing at Fidelity National, didn’t return e-mails or phone calls seeking comment; neither did the office of Costco’s chief financial officer.