BIOPHARM EXECUTIVE SPECIAL EDITION

DEEP DIVE

Top Paid Pharma Execs—and Those Who Would Get the Most to Leave 

BioSpace recently did a deep dive into executive pay, examining the highest compensation packages, pay ratios and golden parachutes—what a CEO would get paid to leave.  

Among our findings, Eli Lilly’s David Ricks was mentioned many times. He handily beat Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato for the top slot on our list of the most highest compensated pharma execs. Duato, who topped the list in 2023, took in $24.6 million last year, nearly $5 million less than Ricks.  

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Ricks also has the largest golden parachute, with up to $131.4 million due to him upon departure depending on the circumstances.  

There are myriad ways these termination payments can be triggered: being fired with or without cause, on retirement, in the event of a merger or acquisition and so on. Executives also have clauses offering compensation in the event of death or injury. The largest payouts tend to be for termination with replacement, meaning the CEO is let go and another comes in to take his or her place. 

Ricks’ closest peer on the golden parachute list was Gilead’s Daniel O’Day, who could receive as much as $80.6 million upon departure from the California drugmaker.  

Eli Lilly’s chief executive also had one of the highest executive-to-employee pay ratios—but not the highest, thanks to the pharma’s relatively high median employee pay. Ricks’ compensation was 243 times that of the $120k that Lilly’s median employee took home.  

Topping Ricks on the pay ratio list was Duato, who received 293 times that of the median J&J employee, who earned $83,000, and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla, who got 269 times the pay of his median employee. Merck’s Robert Davis rounded out the top four with a CEO-to-median employee ratio of 219:1.  

At the bottom of the list is Vertex’s Reshma Kewalramani, who received 88 times her median employee’s pay. This reflects a high baseline salary for rank-and-file employees. Kewalramani made $21.5 million in 2024, while the median employee at the cystic fibrosis drugmaker made $245,708.  

Kewalramani is also one of two women on the list of CEOs at the top 20 pharma companies by market cap. She’s joined by GSK’s Emma Walmsley, who is on an interesting pay journey after receiving just $13.3 million in 2024. The U.K. pharma's board approved a massive pay bump for the chief executive, putting her prospective pay at $27.2 million. That would mean a 104% increase if she drives the company through a number of performance milestones this year.  

As an everyday person, executive pay packages can seem a little daunting. So let’s put these pharma CEO pay packages into perspective with other sectors. Ricks’ $29.2 million compensation for 2024 pales in comparison to that of James Anderson, who heads semiconductor maker Coherent and was the highest paid CEO of all last year with $101.5 million, according to the Equilar 100 study. But here’s the kicker: Anderson helped Coherent bring in $4.7 billion in 2024, whereas Ricks drove Lilly to $13.5 billion.  

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly earnings of the U.S.’s nearly 121 million full-time wage and salary workers was $1,194 in the first quarter of 2025. That works out to $62,088 annually.  

For an idea of what that looks like in the pharma world, Sanofi’s Paul Hudson makes $11 million, which is 166 times the company’s median pay of $68,212.  

It’s all relative.  

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