New Delhi: The phenomenon of nine-figure pay for CEOs had been dwindling after 2021. But a recent report by The Wall Street Journal has revealed that $100-million pay for chief executives is now back.
“More US CEOs last year crossed the once-rare pay threshold than in any year since 2021—and nearly a dozen topped $200 million,” the report said.
Elon Musk tops the list of millionaire CEOs, with a record-setting $158 billion pay package from Tesla. But to get this money, the world’s richest man must drastically raise the company’s market value over 10 years.
The deal is about 16 times the combined value for all 391 other chiefs in The Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO pay ranking.
It was Musk’s 2018 Tesla pay package, at roughly $56 billion, that led to a surge in “moonshot” pay packages: ambitious, ultra-high-value compensation plans that pay out only if the company achieves groundbreaking milestones.
Shankh Mitra, David Zaslav, Hock Tan
Shankh Mitra, the CEO of Welltower, a real-estate investment trust, comes in second at $821 million. According to MyLogIQ data, Mitra’s pay package is one of the biggest for a public company CEO over the past decade.
“At Welltower, 99% of Mitra’s pay came from stock grants, including $789 million awarded in October. By year-end, the company said shares underlying the award were valued at just over $1 billion,” The Wall Street Journal report said.
About half of Mitra’s stock-related payout depends on Welltower’s market value rising by 45 per cent. The Indian-origin executive became the company CEO in 2020.
Two of the highest-paid CEOs in 2025 head top-performing companies.
Warner Bros. Discovery ranked fourth by performance, with a pay of $165 million for CEO David Zaslav. However, stockholders have recently expressed dissatisfaction about the package, which tripled from $51.9 million in 2024.
Broadcom, which ranked seventh in performance, said total pay for chief executive Hock Tan reached $205 million. It was a sharp increase from Tan’s $2.63 million in 2024. The company chief could receive hundreds of millions of dollars in additional stock compensation if Broadcom reaches $120 billion in AI product sales by 2030.
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