CEO salaries in the pharmaceutical industry

Last week, you may have caught some news indicating that "Pfizer CEO Gets 12.5 Percent Raise From Last Year's $14.9M." Wow, it's hard to imagine what you could do with that much money.

Is that a base salary of $14.9 million? No, but this is how it breaks down:

CEO Jeff Kindler’s overall compensation for last year was $14.9 million, according to Dow Jones Newswire, a slight decrease from the year before, mostly because of lower stock prices for much of 2009. But Kindler stands to receive more this year: a base salary of $1.8 million (versus $1.6 million last year), an incentive target award of up to $2.7 million (from $2.4 million last year) and a long-term incentive award of $12 million (compared with $8.3 million last year).

Now, let's compare Kindler’s compensation package to a few other CEOs in the pharma industry:

• Abbott Laboratories’ Miles White reportedly received $25.3 million in 2008
• Merck & Co.’s Richard T. Clark, reportedly received $17.3 million in 2008
• Andrew Witty from GlaxoSmithKline received 1.78 million pounds ($2.51 million) in 2008
• David Brennan from AstraZeneca  received $4.7 million in 2008

You can actually find pharma CEO salaries posted on Forbes.com and other websites.



In 2008, FiercePharma reported the following CEO salary figures:

1. Miles White - Abbott - $33.4M
2. Fred Hassan - Schering-Plough - $30.1M
3. Bill Weldon - Johnson & Johnson - $25.1M
4. Bob Essner - Wyeth - $24.1M
5. Robert Parkinson - Baxter - $17.6M
6. Daniel Vasella - Novartis - $15.5M
7. Richard Clark - Merck - $14.5M
8. Frank Baldino - Cephalon - $13.5M
9. Sidney Taurel - Eli Lilly - $13M
10. Jeff Kindler - Pfizer - $12.6M
11. Jim Cornelius - Bristol-Myers Squibb - $11.3
12. Franz Humer - Roche - $11.1M
13. Robert Coury - Mylan - $8.5M
14. Jean-Pierre Garnier - GlaxoSmithKline - $6M
15. Werner Wenning - Bayer - $4.77M
16. David Brennan - AstraZeneca - $4.3M
17. Gerard Le Fur - Sanofi-Aventis - $3.27M