In the long run, having a company dependent on a handful of highly-paid superstars is an incredible risk. Moreover if one team's hiring practices create a "class system" where there are vast disparities in how engineers are paid, there are going to be resentments.

If you build a special team in a company that has different norms overall, everything that you accomplish is going to be discounted according to how much it makes the rest of the company harder to manage, and how vulnerable the company becomes to a small number of superstars leaving. There's a bigger picture than just what the team gets done.

EDIT: That said, if the results are markedly better than the company's general performance, the company as a whole might need some re-tooling. But a special team isn't going to stay special for long, either way.