May 29, 2024
CEO Pay: The “Elon Effect” Is Real
In 2022, Liz shared that we were starting to see the “Elon Effect” impact pay decisions at other companies. The WSJ recently reported that this impact has continued. The article says that more CEOs got “outsized” pay packages in recent years:
In the past five years, three dozen CEOs of S&P 500 companies have received pay packages valued at $50 million or more, up from nine in the five years before Musk’s, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from MyLogIQ, a provider of public-company data and analysis. The total cost of those pay packages has also grown rapidly, quadrupling in the past five years from the earlier period, the Journal found. […]
Just one S&P 500 pay package topped $150 million in the five years leading up to Musk’s 2018 blockbuster arrangement. Nine have done so in the five years since.
Notably, these findings are based on data through 2024 proxy statements, so the related pay decisions pre-dated Tornetta.
– Meredith Ervine