Wells Fargo & Co.'s top executives will get much bigger paydays for 2009, including $18.7 million for chief executive John Stumpf.

Stumpf and three other top executives did not get bonuses and their perks were worth less compared to recent years. But they did get much bigger salaries and stock awards, and a few cashed in previously awarded stock options.

Stumpf made more than three times more than Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who received $6 million in compensation serving as the bank's general counsel and head of consumer banking in 2009. Bank of America faced stricter pay curbs in 2009 because the Charlotte bank had received an extra $20 billion in government loans. Both banks have since paid off their loans.

Critics chastised Bank of America when it disclosed its pay practices last week. They had the same concerns following Wells Fargo's disclosures.

“We are in the midst of the biggest recession since the 1930s and this type of top pay for executives is unfathomable,” Kent Wong, director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California at Los Angeles, told Bloomberg News. “For them not to recognize the huge public outrage over executive pay is unthinkable.”