US CEO Received Billions in Annual Salary Despite Stock Plunge

'Salary King' is Steven Schwarzman of Blackstone
Company size and CEO salary are not necessarily proportional

The salaries of CEOs in the United States were found not to be proportional to the size of their companies. In some cases, even when the company's stock price plummeted, the CEOs still received enormous salaries amounting to billions of won.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 4th (local time), citing data from executive compensation analysis firm C-Suite Comp, that among the top 10 highest-paid CEOs in the U.S. last year, six were not part of the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 companies. The size of the company did not necessarily correlate with the CEO's salary.

The "salary king" is Steven Schwarzman, CEO of the mega private equity firm Blackstone. Last year, he received $253 million (approximately 328.1 billion won), surpassing Sundar Pichai ($226 million), who leads Alphabet, Google's parent company.

Steven Schwarzman, Chairman of Blackstone.

Despite the company's stock returns falling by 40% last year, the salary of co-founder and CEO Schwarzman rose vertically by more than 50% compared to the previous year. Blackstone explained that 30% of Schwarzman's salary last year was an incentive based on investment performance from 2021, not from last year.

Steven Shear, CEO of rental car company Hertz, received a total of $182 million (approximately 236.1 billion won), including stock options, even though the stock price fell 22% after his appointment.

Peloton, a home training company, saw its stock price plunge 79% last year as the pandemic boom ended, but CEO Barry McCarthy, who took office in February last year, received $168 million (approximately 217.9 billion won).

CS Disco, a Texas-based company in Austin that provides cloud services to law firms and lawyers, granted CEO Kiwi Camara stock options worth $109 million (approximately 14.14 billion won) in addition to a base salary of $500,000 (approximately 650 million won) last year. This amounts to more than one-fifth of the company's market capitalization ($500 million) being paid as CEO compensation.

What about the performance CEO Kiwi Camara achieved last year? Although the company's stock price surged 30% this year, it is still down more than 75% compared to early last year.

According to corporate information research firm MyLogIQ, the median 2022 pay package (including salary and stock option value) for CEOs of S&P 500 companies was $14.5 million (approximately 1.94 billion won). The median pure cash compensation, excluding stock options such as salary and bonuses, was $3.7 million (approximately 490 million won).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.