childhood friends, to the board of the company and made them the highest-paid directors in the petroleum industry. In return, the board made McClendon the highest paid CEO of any company in the S&P 500, awarding him a salary of $112 million. McClendon had the company develop a shopping center near the company's headquarters and lease space to restaurants part-owned by McClendon. The company used these restaurants for millions of dollars worth of catering business. McClendon and his family frequently used business jets owned by the company for personal reasons. McClendon has stated that this was allowed per his employment agreement. When McClendon needed money, he convinced the board to have the company purchase his collection of rare maps hanging in the company's offices for $12 million. An entire department at the company, known as "AKM Operations" was dedicated to working on personal projects of McClendon, including having his house fixed after a hail storm. The company signed an agreement to pay $3 million per year for the naming and branding rights to the Paycom Center, where the Oklahoma City Thunder play. The company also committed to buy $3 million worth of tickets per year. McClendon owned a 19% interest in the team. Since McClendon was a history major and loved history, he hired a company historian, who was paid a salary of over $100,000 per year. He also hired the World's Strongest Man, who also received a salary of over $100,000 per year, to promote exercise among company staff. Through the Founders Well Participation Program, McClendon was able to purchase a 2.5% interest in every well the company drills. McClendon borrowed as much as $1.1 billion against his 2.5% stake in thousands of company wells from banks that were also lenders to the company. After this potential conflict was made public, the company terminated the Founders Well Participation Program. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an informal inquiry of McClendon's borrowing practices. However, no enforcement action was taken. Lobbying In 2004, then CEO Aubrey McClendon contributed $450,000 to the campaign of Tom Corbett for attorney general of Pennsylvania. These funds were cited as the reason Corbett won the election, with a narrow margin. When Corbett eventually became governor of Pennsylvania, he was very supportive of Chesapeake's fracking activity in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania was the only state without a severance tax on drillers, despite the fact that the budget