HIGH times at Starbucks, the world’s most aggressively caffeinated coffee company. According to regulatory filings, founder and chairman Howard Schultz racked up $476,000 (€367,000) worth of flights on the company’s private jets last year.

It’ll be interesting to see if he spends as much this year. New rules on the disclosure of executive pay in America mean many top executives are now learning there is no such thing as a free ride — at least not on the corporate jet.

General Mills has capped free personal rides on company aircraft, and last week Mark Fields, Ford’s north America chief, said he would stop using the company jet to fly from Detroit back to his weekend home in Florida.

Shareholders, and some board members, had complained the flights looked frivolous for a company that lost $3.3 billion in the first nine months of 2006 and is axing thousands of jobs. The jet cost Ford $214,479 for the fourth quarter of 2005.

It’s not only air travel that is coming under scrutiny. Nor is it only companies in trouble that are cracking down on perks. Exxon Mobil, which has been reporting record profits, and Lockheed Martin have stopped picking up executives’ country-club dues.

Free financial guidance, corporate flats, entertaining budgets — all sorts of perks once taken for granted are being defenestrated from those top-floor executive suites.

The changes come amid high-profile rows about executive pay and sweeping new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements for additional disclosure about pay and perks.

Back in 2002, it took a nasty divorce battle to unveil the perks package of Jack Welch, a former GE boss and America’s favourite business guru. According to court papers, Welch was entitled to the use of an $80,000-a- month Manhattan apartment owned by GE, courtside seats to the New York Knicks and US Open, seating at Wimbledon, box seats at Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees baseball games, country-club fees, security services and restaurant bills.

Under the new SEC rules, US companies must reveal perks for top executives that add up to $10,000 (€7,700) or more apiece; the old rules only required disclosure of perks valued above $50,000.

There is no information as yet on the number of companies dropping or curbing perks. Details will start to emerge in March and April, when most companies start filing annual statements revealing executive compensation. A survey of 110 large companies by Mercer Human Resource Consulting found 14 had eliminated perks or were considering doing so because of the new regulations.

Companies may hope to scotch criticism with pre-emptive strikes against perks ahead of disclosures. But it already looks like the boards that approved these corporate sweeteners are finding other ways to reward their charges.

Lockheed Martin said in an SEC filing that it gave executives a “one-time salary adjustment” after cutting benefits including country-club dues and financial counselling. Robert Stevens, the chief executive, recently got a $40,000 raise in his base salary, to $1.52m. Robert Coutts, Lockheed’s executive vice president for electronic systems, got a $25,000 raise, to $850,000.

The money is there to pay them. The economy, at least some sectors of it, is roaring ahead. But it seems regulators and shareholders have had enough of the excesses of the past. Chief executives from now on are going to have to pay for their own treats.

If things carry on at this rate, some day soon they may even have to buy their own lunch.