NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - E*Trade Group Inc. handed its chief executive an $80 million pay package last year even though online trading has been in a slump for more than a year, according to company documents.

Christos Cotsakos, who is also chairman of the discount brokerage firm, appears to have been the highest-paid CEO on Wall Street in 2001, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Cotsakos' compensation far outpaced his counterparts at both traditional and online brokerages at a time when a slumping economy caused companies to postpone underwriting and merger and acquisition activity, and also prompted individual investors to park their money in less risky places.

The Dow Jones Financial Services Index, which traded as high as $411.64 Wednesday, tumbled about 15 percent between January and October of 2001.

Against that background, E*Trade appears to have been generous with Cotsakos' compensation.

"The order of magnitude and the overall trend in financial services has clearly been down," said Jac Andre, a partner at Ray & Berndtson, an executive search firm. "The fact of the matter is that the industry across the board has suffered through the recession. Some people are losing their jobs and having their compensation cut as much as 40 percent. Substantial increases are rather unusual in these days."

An E*trade spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.

Cotsakos' package included $797,880 in salary, a bonus of $4.1 million, a forgiven loan of $15 million, an additional $15 million in company-paid taxes on the loan and $9.9 million of "other compensation" in contributions to his retirement plan, the paper reported, adding the total also includes $5.9 million worth of stock options and $29 million of restricted stock.

In addition, Cotsakos earned $11 million in proceeds from exercising stock options granted in previous years.

The package contrasts sharply with the salaries of other brokerage CEOs, many of which took cuts in 2001, and in some cases received slashed bonuses or no bonuses at all.

E*Trade's shares rose about $2.75 last year to close the year at $10.25. But they ended Tuesday's session up 29 cents at $7.54, far below the stock's all-time high of about $70 achieved in April 1999.

"That is beyond outrageous. There were a lot of eyes raised about some of the other pay packages that went out last year, but this one takes the cake," Reilly Tierney, an analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton, told the Journal.