New York: Tesla and spaceX CEO Elon Musk has topped the list of the most highly compensated CEOs on the Fortune 500 in 2021.
After Musk, the 10 most highly compensated Fortune 500 CEOs of 2021 are all tech and biotech CEOs, including the heads of Apple (Tim Cook), Netflix (Reed Hastings), and Microsoft (Satya Nadella).
In 2021, Musk “realised” compensation worth almost $23.5 billion, from exercising some Tesla stock options awarded in a 2018 multiyear “moonshot” grant.
“That was by far the biggest CEO payday in 2021,” Fortune’s report said citing an analysis of how Fortune 500 CEOs are compensated.
After Musk, the 10 most highly compensated Fortune 500 CEOs of 2021 are all tech and biotech CEOs, including the heads of Apple, Netflix , and Microsoft.
List of top 10 most highly compensated CEOs and how much they are paid-
- Elon Musk, Tesla: USD 23.5 billion
- Tim Cook, Apple: USD 770.5 billion
- Jensen Huang, NVIDIA, USD 561 billion
- Reed Hastings, Netflix: USD 453.5 billion
- Leonard Schleifer, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals: USD 452.9 billion
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce: USD 439.4 billion
- Satya Nadella, Microsoft: USD 309.4 million
- Robert A. Kotick, Activision Blizzard: USD 296.7 million
- Hock E. Tan, Broadcom: USD 288 million
- Safra A. Catz, Oracle: USD 239.5 million
To compile the list, Fortune said it evaluated the pay packages of 280 Fortune 500 CEOs, who earned a median total compensation of USD 15.9 million, up 30 per cent from a year earlier. When calculating a CEO’s total realized pay, Fortune measured their salary and bonuses, along with other compensation such as vested restricted stock grants, long-term incentive payouts and perks; and stock gains in the form of value realized from exercising stock options.
