Narayen has been ranked at 5th and D’Souza is 15th on the list of 15 young CEOs, aged 45 or less. The list, published in the online edition of the US business magazine, has been topped by a person of Pakistani origin Nabeel Gareeb, who is the CEO of chipmaker MEMC Electronic Materials since April 2002.

In terms of age, D’Souza is the youngest of the 15 CEOs at 39. Gareeb is aged 43 and Narayen is 44, the report said. However, Gareeb tops the list with an annual pay package of $79.6 million, as against $12 million of Narayen, who is the CEO of Adobe Systems since December 2007.

The annual total compensation for D’Souza, the CEO of Cognizant Technology since January 2007, has been put at $3.7 million. Gareeb is followed by Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang ($45.9 million) at the second, SL Green CEO Marc Holliday ($30 million) at the third and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz ($13.5 million) at the fourth place.

Noting that “young chief executives are becoming an endangered species”, the report said that the number of CEOs aged 45 or less at the 500 largest listed companies in the US has dropped by more than half to 28 from 60 at the time of tech boom in 2000. Just three CEOs among these are yet to reach their 40th birthdays, it noted.

The average annual compensation for these young CEOs at $9.2 million also trails behind the average for all 500 companies at $12.8 million.