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While 1.2 million employees at Wal-Mart lost nearly 18% in the company?s 401(k) retirement plan, its top executives fared much better in 2008, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. Through a supplemental retirement-savings plan only for top executives, Wal-Mart?s CEO and others were guaranteed 6.6% return. Specifically, the CEO had gains of $2.3 million in his supplemental plan.

Another case is Comcast where more than 70,000 employees in the Comcast 401(k) plan lost nearly $650 million or 28%. However, Comcast provides a supplemental savings plan for its top executives with a return of 12%. One of Comcast?s executives had gains of $7.4 million in 2008, boosting his total retirement savings to $71 million.

It turns out that 25% of top executives at major U.S. companies had gains in their supplemental executive retirement-savings plans in 2008 where they had guaranteed fixed returns. However, these executives manage companies whose share prices were down in 2008. This is a stark contrast to 401(k) plans where 50 million employees lost a total of at least $1 trillion last year.

It seems that the gap between employees and executives is not only in compensation, but also in ?the different levels of risk that executives and rank-and-file employees face in their retirement plans.? While a typical employee is limited to contribute to a company?s 401(k) plan, ?companies set up supplemental plans to enable higher-paid employees to set aside more money for retirement.? For example, top executives at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. have access to other investment options that are not available to ordinary employees such as a fixed-income fund that had a 6.6% return in 2008.

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