S&P 500 CEOs’ remuneration packages rose more than 15% on average in 2021.
How are these packages structured?
There are 4 main components:
- Salary
- Stock awards
- Employee stock options
- Bonuses
A study conducted by Equilar shows for 2022 that employee stock options represent on average almost 20% of the total package for CEOs.
While on average stock awards make up more than half of S&P CEO pay.
In 2019, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet (the parent company of Google) earned $280 million.
His salary ($650 0000) represented only 0.23% of the total remuneration package while stock awards were $277M.
Another interesting case is Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO.
In 2014, Hastings earned $11M, $3M in salary and $8M in stock options.
Hastings almost quadrupled his remuneration in 5 years. He earned $39M in 2019. However, Hastings salary decreased to $700 000 while his stock options skyrocketed to $37M.
In 2019, the S&P 500 CEOs median pay reached $13M.