There was an uproar in the world recently after Tesla’s major shareholders overwhelmingly supported Elon Musk’s controversial $56 billion pay, bonus, and compensation package, a deal conditional on the performance of the company’s shares and the rest of the company’s sectors.
Perhaps the question that comes to the reader’s mind is: “Is Elon Musk worth this imaginary amount? What about the rest of the salaries of executives in the world? How much do they get paid for their work?”
According to a 2022 report from the Economic Policy Institute, the annual reported salary of CEOs has increased by 1,460% since 1978, and CEO pay growth has outpaced the growth of the Standard & Poor’s stock market, which grew by 1,063% over the same time period.
According to another study conducted by Equilar, which provides information about the compensation received by executives in the world for the year 2023, the compensation series for 500 executives in the world declined by 1.3%. However, the same study also witnessed an increase in the average Salaries, stocks and other benefits by 7.6%.
Misleading numbers
The announced annual salaries differ radically from the series of bonuses, compensation, incentives and benefits that managers receive. The amount of $56 billion announced regarding Elon Musk’s revenue is somewhat misleading, as it is not the actual annual salary that Musk or other of the richest executives in the world receive, such as Bernard Arnault, CEO of the LVMH group, or Mark Zuckerberg. Meta CEO, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett or other billionaires who hold senior leadership positions in their companies.
According to the announced figures, Arnault receives an annual salary of only 8.01 million euros, and Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, occupies an equally low place on the salary scale of company presidents, as he received a fixed salary of $100,000 annually for more than 35 years. Elon Musk’s salary for 2023 as CEO of Tesla was listed as zero dollars, and Mark Zuckerberg’s salary as CEO of Meta in 2023 amounted to a total of one dollar, according to what the PrestigeOnline platform reported.
Top 10 highest paid CEOs
In this report, Al Jazeera Net presents the 10 highest paid executives in the world (officially announced salaries only and not including incentives and other rewards) according to the PrestigeOnline platform:
Tenth place: Satya Nadella
Company: Microsoft.
Sector: Technology.
Annual salary: $48.5 million annually.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, 56 years old, earned a salary of $48,512,537 last year, which placed him on this list of the highest-paid CEOs in the world.
Nadella joined Sun Microsystems, and then moved to Microsoft in 1992, where his prowess and skills were evident in the various tasks and positions he held in the company, reaching the position of CEO of the company, the third director after the terms of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. His wealth is estimated at $974 million, although reports indicate that the actual number is much higher.
Ninth place: Hamid R. Presenter
Company: Prologis Corporation (PLD).
Sector: Real Estate and Strategic Capital.
Annual salary: $50.9 million.
Moghaddam was born in 1956 in Tehran, and later enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in engineering.
In 1984, he founded AMB Property, which achieved remarkable success. Its market value in 2011 amounted to about $3.5 billion.
In 2011, Moghadam led the merger of AMP with Prologis to create the world’s largest real estate logistics company. Moghaddam served as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of this company. Reports indicate that his current net worth is estimated at $220 million.
8th place: Jagtar Singh Chaudhary
Company: Zscale (ZS).
Sector: Technology.
Annual salary: $57.8 million.
Chaudhary’s life is an exciting story that highlights the importance of struggle in life. Born in the village of Banwa in India, he spent his life until his teenage years without electricity.
Chaudhry said that he walked 4 kilometers a day to attend high school in the nearby village of Dusara, and at the age of 22, he traveled to the United States, where he enrolled at the University of Cincinnati and obtained a master’s degree in industrial engineering.
Chaudhry founded 5 successful startups, including Scaler; He has served as its executive director since its establishment in 2007, and his net worth in 2024 is estimated at approximately $4.6 billion.
Seventh place: Timothy D. Cook
Company: Apple (AAPL).
Sector: Technology.
Annual salary: $63.2 million.
Cook’s journey at Apple began in 1998, when he joined the company at the request of Steve Jobs as Senior Vice President of Global Operations, and after receiving an annual salary of $63 million, 209 thousand and 845 dollars in 2023, Cook now finds himself among the highest paid executives. In the world.
Cook was born into a poor, working-class family in the US state of Alabama, and the family lacked the means to purchase a new typewriter while Cook was educated and raised.
He attended Auburn University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in industrial engineering in 1982. After graduation, Cook joined IBM, where he spent 12 years and then moved to Apple. Today, Cook’s fortune is worth about $2.1 billion.
Sixth place: William J. Lansing
Company: Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO).
Sector: Technology.
Annual salary: $66.3 million.
After leading 8 different companies, William Lansing is the current CEO of FICO, a data analysis company based in Montana that focuses on credit scoring services.
Lansing earned his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and his juris doctorate from Georgetown University.
Lansing held leadership positions in a number of important companies in the world, including Vice President of Business Development at General Electric. His salary in 2023 as CEO of FICO reached $66.3 million, and his net worth in 2024 was estimated at about $421 million.
Fifth place: Christopher L. Winfrey
Company: Charter (CHTR) Communications.
Sector: Telecommunications services.
Annual salary: $89 million.
Christopher Winfrey, CEO of Charter Communications, has earned his place among the world’s highest-paid CEOs with a staggering $89 million salary in 2023.
Winfrey graduated from the University of Florida and obtained an MBA. He worked in leadership positions in many prominent companies such as Vodafone, Cablecom, and others. His declared net worth now stands at $53 million, although many observers say it is higher than that. Much.
Fourth place: Stephen Schwarzman
Company: Blackstone (BX) (Blackstone Group).
Sector: Financial Services.
Annual salary: $119.8 million.
77-year-old billionaire Stefan Schwarzman comes in fourth place. Schwarzman has a net worth of $37.8 billion, which places him firmly among the richest 1% in the world.
Schwarzman was born in the US state of Pennsylvania, and founded the Blackstone Group with its president, Peter Peterson. Today, the company manages assets worth more than $1 trillion, and has a market capitalization of approximately $154.41 billion.
Third place: Su Y Nabi
Company: COTY.
Sector: Beauty industry.
Annual salary: $149.43 million.
Nabi occupies third place on the list of the highest-paid CEOs in the world as the CEO of the American multinational beauty company (Coty), and the Algerian-born French businesswoman oversees a wide range of the company’s brands.
Nabi worked as General Manager of the famous French company L’Oreal, and in 2020 she was appointed CEO of Coty. Today, her net worth is estimated at $373 million.
Second place: Nikesh Arora
Company: Palo Alto Networks (PANW).
Sector: Technology.
Annual salary: $151.43 million.
Nikesh Arora was born to a middle-class family in India, and comes in second place with a salary of $151.43 million in 2023. He earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Northeastern University.
He worked in senior leadership positions at T-Mobile, Google, and others, before assuming his current position. His net worth is estimated at $1.5 billion.
First place: Tan Hock Eng
Company: Broadcom (AVGO).
Sector: Technology.
Annual salary: $161.83 million.
The Malaysian-born businessman ranked first as the highest-paid CEO in the world with an annual salary of $161.83 million at Broadcom, a position he has held since 2006.
His father could not afford university expenses, so he received a scholarship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1971. He worked hard and with great determination until he graduated from the institute in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, and after a few years, he obtained an MBA from Harvard University.
Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Tan has chaired several multi-billion dollar companies, including General Motors and PepsiCo. Tan is also a member of the Board of Directors of Meta, a position he assumed this year in February. His net worth is estimated at $1.39 billion.
