A new report shows that compensation packages of the CEOs of the largest companies in America shattered records in 2023, with stock awards largely responsible for the increase.
Analysis by the Wall Street Journal showed the average pay of the CEOs of the biggest firms in the US was $15.7 million. That’s up from $14.5 million in 2022.
The top eight CEOs all made $50 million or more during the past year, reflecting a global trend of growing salaries for executives. Those salaries are generally reliant on performance.
The biggest earners list doesn’t include high-profile CEOs such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk or Tim Cook, there are also no women in the top 25.
The biggest earner on the Journal’s list was Broadcom’s Hock Tan who raked in around $162 million. As part of his deal, Tan must stay in his role for five years while ensuring the company hits share price targets.
The biggest earner on the Journal’s list was Broadcom’s Hock Tan, shown here, who raked in around $162 million
Nikesh Arora, a former top executive at Google, came in at second the list thanks to his role at Palo Talo Networks
Tan’s 2023 pay, which was fueled by stock awards of $160.5 million, was 510 times the median salary of employees at the chip firm.
Broadcom previously said that Tan’s pay deal is in part to ensure loyalty and to ensure that shareholders’ goals can be realized. During the remainder of his time as CEO, Tan will not receive cash bonuses or any other equity.
In November 2023, Broadcom announced it had cleared all regulatory hurdles and plans to complete its $69 billion acquisition of cloud technology company VMware.
Broadcom posted 2023 revenue of $35.82 billion, and its stock has risen about 17 percent so far in 2024 after nearly doubling last year.
Tan, has been pursuing such deals for years, building out the company with big acquisitions like Symantec for close to $11 billion in 2019, and CA Technologies for about $19 billion the year before.
Following Tan is Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks who made $151 million, with $149.5 million coming in equity awards. Arora, a former top executive at Google, has been in the role with Palo Alto since June 2018.
The company provides software security to 85 of the Fortune 100.
In third, Stephen Schwarzman who brought in $119.7 million with all but $350,000 of that coming in equity at Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm.
Schwarzman, a previous heavy backer of Donald Trump’s presidency but who revealed he won’t support him in 2024, took home a total of $896.7 million including dividends, down 30 percent from his $1.2 billion take home in 2022.
Schwarzman owns about 231.9 million shares of Blackstone, and the company paid an annual dividend of $3.35 per share.
Stephen Schwarzman, Co-founder, Chairman & CEO, Blackstone, is third on the list. He recently made headlines after declaring he would not support Donald Trump in 2024
Charter CEO Chris Winfrey came in a fourth on the list of CEOs, he’s been with the company since 2010
In fourth, Christopher Winfrey of Charter Communications made $89 million, $84 million of that was equity. Winfrey has been with Charter since 2010, joining first as CFO before becoming COO in 2021. In that time, Charter has grown considerably.
He ascended to his current role as CEO and president in December 2022. It was first revealed in March of this year that his pay had risen to just shy of $90 million.
The highest paid woman on the list is Julie Sweet of Accenture, coming in at 28 on the list with earnings of just over $30 million, $120 million less than those at the top end.
The second highest place woman on the list, Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices, with earnings of $30 million, made $28 million in stock.
There were 31 women in charge of S&P 500 companies for the year ending 2023, up from 24 in 2020.
Apple CEO Tim Cook did manage to crack the top ten list of earners, alongside Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Discovery’s David Zaslav.
One third of the worst performing companies in the WSJ’s analysis were healthcare companies with Pfizer admitting that bonuses were not paid to executives after financial goals were not met.
The pharmaceutical giant’s CEO Albert Bourla received $17.5 million in equity as gratitude for loyalty and to help to focus on long term targets, the company said.
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