Bloomberg is out today with its annual Pay Index report covering the year 2020, ranking the compensation of top US executives and CEOs. This year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unsurprisingly comes in at the top, while Apple CEO Tim Cook has fallen to spot No. 8 on the list.
In last year’s rankings, Cook was the second-highest paid CEO with $133.7 million in earnings from a combination of stock awards, salary, and bonuses. In 2020, Bloomberg’s data shows that Cook’s compensation nearly doubled to $265 million, but his placement on the rankings fell to eight.
According to the data, Cook earned $10.7 million from bonuses, $250.3 million from stock awards, $3 million in salary, $1 million in perks.
Bloomberg explains that one of the reasons for the growing executive compensation in 2020 was an increase in “Musk-like” awards. For comparison, Musk’s total compensation hit $6.7 billion in 2020, thanks to option awards.
At least 15 company leaders got Musk-like awards worth $100 million or more last year — up threefold from when the Tesla Inc. founder got his. Moonshot copycats are appearing in some fairly staid places, like Restoration Hardware, Paycom Software Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
So far, Musk’s award has yielded him about $33 billion of paper gains and made him the highest-paid U.S. executive for three consecutive years, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index. Behind him is a string of other mostly male, mostly white corporate leaders with awards projected to pay out nine or 10 figures. Only five of the country’s 100 top-paid executives last year were women.
Bloomberg also points out that the median ratio between pay for S&P 500 CEOs and employees increased to 182 in 2020, the third year in a row of an increase.
In terms of the highest-paid women executives and CEOs, Apple has two on the list: Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of retail and people, and Kate Adams, senior vice president and general counsel.
You can find the full Bloomberg report right here.
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