I believe that most, if not all, of the CEOs of the worst affected companies lost their jobs. Having said that, there would have been a fair few golden handshakes so your point is valid.

To my mind the worst of those was Stan O'Neill. He got kicked out when it was just a disaster but not yet a catastrophe (when the mortgage losses were known but before the liquidity crunch) so he walked away with something heinous like $160mm.