Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, waded into the debate over executive pay today and questioned the mammoth compensation package of Oracle's Larry Ellison, his fellow billionaire in the technology sector.

Mr Ellison, worth an estimated $26 billion, earned about $74 million from Oracle last year.

Mr Ellison collected a pay package valued at $61.2 million and stock option gains of nearly $182 million for the year ending May 31. Most of his pay consisted of 7 million stock options worth an estimated $50.1 million. The Redwood City business software maker also paid Mr Ellison a $1 million salary and $8.4 million in incentives.

Mr Ballmer was not awarded stock options and his pay and bonus totalled $980,000.

He told Times Online: “I find it interesting and probably not that considered a decision to do what [Oracle have] done.”

Mr Ballmer, owns 9.3 per cent of Microsoft, and said that his direct stake in the company was motivation enough to stir Microsoft's lacklustre share price.

The Microsoft board said recently that Mr Bullmer was “probably underpaid”. He has a personal fortune of $15 billion.

The Microsoft boss has committed himself to transforming the company into a growth stock. Its shares have traded sideways for several years and are down about 50 per cent from the peak of the dot-com boom.

He said: “I’m sort of like a parent to this little child and I’m a large stakeholder in Microsoft. And I certainly feel like if I do a good job I’ll be well rewarded in the appreciation of our shares.”

Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive, was the highest paid US chief executive last year, earning $646 million. Virtually all of Mr Jobs’s income came from stock-based compensation. His base salary at Apple is $1.

Read the full interview with Steve Ballmer in The Times tomorrow

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