CEO pay packages have reached extraordinary levels, and Elon Musk stands far above everyone else with a compensation package valued at roughly $132 billion, The New York Times reports.
Musk’s compensation is almost entirely stock-based rather than salary or cash bonuses, receiving shares only if Tesla achieves a series of ambitious long-term performance targets tied to company value, vehicle production, autonomous driving initiatives and robotics projects.
Even among highly paid executives, Musk is in a different category. Other top earners discussed include executives whose packages are measured in hundreds of millions rather than tens of billions of dollars.
The $132 billion figure comes from the latest annual survey of the highest-paid CEOs for The New York Times by the research firm Equilar.
Supporters argue that performance-based stock awards align CEO incentives with shareholder interests, while critics point to the widening gap between executive and worker pay.
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