Top CEO ‘s Salary From Highest Earning Elon Musk to Lowest Earning Warren Buffett…
Starting from Elon Musk, Tim Cook to Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive Officers of a company / organization are the ones who lead the firm in the market by maximizing revenue and growth, parallelly meeting the goals and objectives of the company, that literally means, Board of Directors’ (BoD) decisions.
Being in such a responsible role, pays as much as in their compensation CEOs get. After BoDs, CEOs are the highest paid in a firm and the ratio of a CEO’s salary to an average employee’s salary is in 100s. For example, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gets compensation that’s 800 times more than a Google engineer is paid annually.
Here is how much World’s top 10 companies’ CEO earn annually..
Tim Cook – Apple
The master-mind behind $2.4 trillion Apple, Tim Cook takes home a whopping $102 million in 2022. Tim’s base salary is $3 million, while his compensation in stocks, and other incentives add up to $99 million in 2022. However, Tim Cook cuts his salary 40% to $40 million in 2023 to tackle the company’s sustainability amid recession.
Amin H. Nasser – Saudi Aramco
65-year-old Amin H. Nasser is the Chief Executive Officer of Saudi Aramco, world’s leading integrated energy and chemicals enterprise, and the largest provider of crude oil. Saudi Aramco, a $2 trillion company, also has Amin H. Nasser as one of its BoD. Though his total compensation is not known, Amin H. Nasser receives $5.2 million annually from Saudi Aramco and owns 7500+ shares in the company.
Satya Nadella – Microsoft
Indian-origin Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft is responsible for directing the company in the profitable road since 2014. With Satya Nadella on board, Microsoft had invested and acquired several companies including LinkedIn, GitHub and more. One of the notable investments by Microsoft in OpenAI had let to the birth of ChatGPT, which now supports Microsoft’s Bing.
Satya Nadella receives $54.95 Million in 2022 as total compensation with $52.45 million stock & other benefits.
Sundar Pichai – Alphabet
One of the most acclaimed, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet & Google, had widened the firm in all aspects from technology to research to AI. Alphabet & Google had multi-folded its business and revenue under Sundar’s leadership. For his works & contribution to the firm, Indian-born CEO Sundar Pichai made $226 million in 2022. His base salary was $2 million and the remaining $224 million as incentives.
Andy Jassy – Amazon
The world’s largest e-commerce platform Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy first joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997 and after 24 years in the company, was elected as CEO on July 5, 2021. Andy Jassy had already been served as CEO of Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) since 2003.
With all his experience and profound expertise, Andy Jassy made $1.3 Million as total annual compensation in the year 2022. With base salary $317,500, Andy receives comparatively less when compared to other CEOs, but not as less as Warren Buffett.
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Elon Musk – Tesla
Here comes the World’s Richest person, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, who is also the co-founder of SpaceX, OpenAI, Neuralink and Boring. Elon Musk is the richest paid CEO in the world with Tesla alone and the numbers are whoppingly shocking. A report says that Elon Musk had unlocked stock benefits and incentives worth $50 billion for ten years of his phenomenal contribution to Tesla. Besides, Elon Musk owns the largest number of shares in Tesla.
Elon Musk had twelve-folded Tesla’s worth within a shorter span, that let him to receive these benefits, ultimately making him the richest man in the world. His base salary is said to be $2.4 billion annually.
Warren Buffett – Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett, the CEO and founder of Berkshire Hathaway is an investor, American business magnate and a philanthropist. Currently seated also as the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett multiplied his wealth exponentially with strictly adhering to time-tested value investing over years. His long-term investments and manifesting the powers of stock-market made him one of the top ten richest persons in the world.
But the most exciting part is that, Warren is extremely frugal, that he still lives in the house he bought in the 1958. Such a person, as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, receives only $100,000 as annual salary with no stock or other incentives. The man is unbelievable!
Mark Zuckerberg – Meta Platforms
Meta, previously known as Facebook, was co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg and had seated him as the CEO since its existence. Mark Zuckerberg earns $26 million annually including all benefits, taking $1 as base salary. Generally, CEOs take less salary, but more incentives and stock benefits for additional reasons explained at the bottom of the page.
C.C.Wei – TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, and Taiwan’s largest company. With Apple, Nvidia and AMD as its biggest customers, TSMC is valued at $419 billion.
C.C.Wei joined TSMC in 1998 and has been the CEO of the company since November 2013. C.C.Wei receives $14.89 million as total compensation annually from TSMC (s), with 93.7% as stock and other benefits, a report says.
Andrew Witty – United Health Group
The Chief Executive Officer of United Health Group, Andrew Witty received $18,433,143 in total compensation in the year 2021, with $1.45 Million as his base salary (s).
For better understanding, I had tabulated the annual salary and total compensation of the top ten company’s CEOs. The amounts are not precise, but approximated.
| Company | CEO | Salary | Stock & Other Benefits | Total Compensation |
| Apple | Tim Cook | $3 Million | $99 Million | $102 Million |
| Saudi Aramco | Amin H. Nasser | $5.2 Million | (Not Known) | – |
| Microsoft | Satya Nadella | $2.5 Million | $52.45 Million | $54.95 Million |
| Alphabet | Sundar Pichai | $2 Million | $224 Million | $226 Million |
| Amazon | Andy Jassy | $317,500 | $982,500 | $1.3 Million |
| Tesla | Elon Musk | $2.4 Billion | $5 Billion | $7.4 Billion |
| Berkshire Hathaway | Warren Buffett | $100,000 | – | $100,000 |
| Meta Platforms | Mark Zuckerberg | $1 | $26 Million | $26 million |
| Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) | C.C. Wei | $0.9 Million | $13.99 Million | $14.89 Million |
| United Health Group | Andrew Witty | $1.45 Million | $16.95 Million | $18.4 Million |
(Only the CEOs of Top 10 Companies of 2022 are taken into consideration in this article).
(The $50 billion stock benefits and incentives of Elon Musk for a ten-year period is tabulated as an average for each year as $5 billion. However, Elon Musk’s stock compensations are wavery. For example, from May 2020 to November 2022, Musk received $31.7 billion, with earnings as much as $10 billion in Q1 of 2021 alone, according to reports.)
Why the CEOs’ salaries are much lesser than their stock & other benefits?
If you had seen the table above, the salaries of CEOs are comparatively less to their stock and other benefits. This isn’t something that’s bounded by company’s rules and regulations, but a mere fact that salaries are tax-inefficient. CEOs prefer to take up less salaries and more as incentives and compensations, as it saves the tax predominantly.
Who is the lowest paid CEO of the top ten companies in the World?
Warren Buffett. There isn’t any particular reason for this, other than Warren Buffett is frugal to the core. He lives in the same house that he bought in 1958.
Who is the highest paid CEO of the top ten companies in the world?
Elon Musk is the highest paid CEO. Elon Musk had cleared the targets assigned to him (for CEO) within the time period, for which he received $50 billion in compensation for achieving the targets.
Normally, CEOs have targets assigned to them by the firm’s BoDs, and only by meeting them, they will be paid in heavy in terms of incentives and other benefits. And that’s how most of the CEOs including Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, pocket a considerable amount of money into their accounts.
Hope you find the page useful!
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