Macquarie Group's revamp of its executive remuneration to include more shares, less cash and the scrapping of share options for 2500 staff does not mean top executives will never again be able to earn $30 million a year. What it will mean is that the options packages that created so many millionaires in the bull market will no longer be allowed to act as a demotivating factor in the bear market for Macquarie's 2500 most talented staff and, in particular, its 300 executive directors.Macquarie obtains a double benefit from the scrapping of options for everyone except the top dozen employees. Its most talented staff will no longer be in danger of watching their incentives evaporate and, secondly, it will no longer have to amortise the cost of up to 15 per cent of diluted capital against its earnings. Last year, Macquarie amortised $100 million for options which had not delivered any benefit to staff.Macquarie's staff outside of the executive committee will still be exposed to movements in the share price but they will no longer have an important part of their equity remuneration in danger of being worthless.There will be no change to the incentive formula that last year delivered chief executive Nicholas Moore a total remuneration package of $26.7 million.Moore's base salary in 2008 was $517,000 while his available profit share was $18.7 million and restricted profit share was $5.3 million.As can be seen from those numbers, the largest proportion of his package was from his annual profit share allocation, which is calculated based on net profit after tax and return on ordinary equity.Macquarie's plunge in return on equity has seen the amount of money allocated to salary and related costs including commissions, superannuation and profit share fall dramatically. In the six months to September it fell 48 per cent to $1.1 billion. Just as the drivers of bonus payments will remain the same, so will the mystery surrounding the factors used to determine the quantum of the profit share pool and the timing of its payments.A former Macquarie employee said the profit share was usually a third for shareholders, a third for the company and a third for staff. The beauty of the profit share is that it can be managed to smooth the profit available to shareholders.The two most significant aspects of today's announcement are the scrapping of share options and the increased proportion of ordinary equity to be included in remuneration packages and locked away for up to seven years.Share options have proved to be a poor way of motivating staff over the past 18 months. As the share price has collapsed from $90 to less than $30, thousands of options have become worthless.Macquarie would only issue options at an exercise price set at the prevailing market price. This meant that the exercise price acted as an embedded share price hurdle on top of other performance hurdles.Options were given to staff upon their promotion to the various director levels and to new recruits at each director