This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers.Elon Musk topped Bloomberg's latest pay rankings, earning $6.6 billion in options awards in 2020.He sustains this compensation by taking enormous risks for huge payouts, an executive-pay expert says.On Thursday, Bloomberg reported inthat the Tesla CEO topped the list for the third year in a row. He made about $6.6 billion in 2020 thanks to option awards.
As the electric-car company continues to hit ambitious market-cap targets, triggered huge payouts for Musk, other companies are following suit: Similar deals helped CEOs in nearly every industry pass the threshold of earning $100 million last year. "It used to be if you made $20 million, that was an enormous amount to make the headlines," said Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, an executive-pay consulting firm.
But over the past five years, there's been a noticeable pull that Musk's compensation deal has exerted on executive pay across the board, Johnson said. CEO pay is now increasing at breakneck speed as other companies employ compensation structures that offer the potential of outsized rewards if CEOs hitting ambitious growth targets.
"The magnitude of what he has accomplished and the value he's got provides a cover for everybody else," Johnson said.In 2018, Musk shocked everyone by striking an unprecedented deal with Tesla over his
Lol. elonmusk actually hasn't all that much appetite for risk. Instead, he rigs and games the system in myriad ways and set up a 'compensation' structure that would maximise his payout from said rigging and cheating.
good luck