While last year’s meltdown crushed clients’ portfolios and left advisors scrambling to explain their firms’ behavior, top management teams had built up enough wealth in previous years that they did just fine.

The two companies that came to characterize the meltdown—Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers—saw their top executives take paper losses of nearly $1 billion when their respective companies' stocks plunged in 2008. But the firms' top people had taken in nearly $2.5 billion from 2000 to 2008, according to a Harvard Law School study.

Incentive pay structures at the banks encouraged top executives to take excessive risks, and greatly enriched the top executives from 2000 to 2009, contrary to conventional wisdom that the wealth of the bankers was wiped out when each of the banks collapsed, according to a report from the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, which was posted online on Sunday.

The top executive teams at Bear and Lehman cashed out $1 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively, in performance-based compensation from cash bonuses that were not clawed back and from stock sales, which had been paid as compensation prior to and during the 2000-2008 time period, according to the report. The stock had been paid as compensation either prior to or during that time period.

While the compensation for the top five executive teams at each of the banks remained stable from 2000 to 2009, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents, the report says, shareholders lost most of their initial investments over the same time period.

The study found that Lehman's former chairman and chief executive, Richard Fuld, took in $70.5 million in cash bonuses and $470.6 million from stock sales.

Bear's chairman and CEO, James Cayne, received $87.5 million in cash bonuses and $287 million from the stock sales during the period.

The remaining four of the top five Bear executives, Alan Greenberg, former chairman of the executive committee and chairman of the board; Samuel Molinaro, former chief financial officer and chief operating officer and COO; Alan Schwartz, former co-COO, CEO and director; and Warren Spector, former co-COO; received an aggregate $239.3 million in cash bonuses and $817.2 million from stock sales.

The other Lehman executives, David Goldfarb, former CFO and chief administrative officer; Joseph Gregory, former co-COO and CAO; Christopher O’Meara, former CFO; and Thomas Russo, former chief legal officer; received $102 million in cash bonuses and $389.3 million from stock sales.

Amid the debate on the role of pay practices in the financial crisis, the authors say compensation structures played a part in inducing risk-taking and that reforming such structures holds potential value in preventing similar problems in the future.

Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard Law professor (and an advisor to Obama administration compensation czar Kenneth Feinberg), economics professor Alma Cohen and law professor Holger Spamann conducted the study.

Lee Conrad contributed to this story.