Fannie Mae's CEO has said he'll step down as soon as the company finds a successor. He can afford a little downtime, considering he made about $5.6 million in 2010, according to his Forbes profile. The morning's news stories about Williams's Tuesday evening announcement don't explicitly say why he's leaving the company, just quoting him as saying it was the "right to turn over the reins to a new leader." But Williams has been at the center of some controversy over his pay. Williams and his Freddie Mac counterpart Charles Haldeman Jr. appeared before a Congressional panel in November for questioning over their salaries and those of their executives at the government-backed Mortgage firms, which got huge bailouts in 2008. As the Associated Press reports via Washington Post, "twelve executives at the firms received roughly $35.4 million in total salary and bonuses in 2009 and 2010. Williams earned about $9.3 million for the two years." Haldeman announced in October that he would quit within a year.

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Adam Martin