Mike Blake/Reuters
- According a $4 from The New York Times, $4 CEO Elon Musk was paid nearly $2.3 billion last year.
- This is more than the next 65 highest-paid CEOs combined.
- Tesla has had its share of turmoil over the last year, and its stock price has fallen dramatically since the start of 2019.
- $4
CEOs make a lot of money, but Elon Musk blew his competition out of the water in 2018, according to a $4.
The study, done with the executive compensation consultancy Equilar, looked at $4 last year.
According to the report, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was awarded nearly $2.3 billion last year, largely in the form of stock options. The next-highest CEO on the list, Discovery's David M. Zaslav, made $129 million.
That is such a giant disparity that the Times had to "add an extra dimension" to their $4. While the other 199 executives on the list are represented by a standard bar chart, Musk's haul is illustrated with a two-dimensional rectangle.
To put that into perspective, the left column on the chart below shows Musk's total 2018 compensation from Tesla, while the stack of bars making up the right column show the total sum of the next 65 executives on the Times' list:
$4 is uncommon among top executives. Approved by Tesla's board in March 2018, the package awards options to Musk if Tesla hits specific market capitalization milestones over a decade.
Several commentators at the time noted the unusual nature of the compensation package. $4 pointed out that Musk already controls a large amount of Tesla's stock, and so he already has strong incentives to boost the company's market cap.
Read more: $4
Musk's outsized compensation coincided with a tumultuous year for him and the company. $4, The Times observed that Tesla had issues with scaling up production of their cars. Further, a $4 last August suggesting that he had "funding secured" to take the company private led to $4.
$4 whipsawed throughout 2018, eventually ending up about 4% over the year. In 2019, the stock has declined dramatically as the company's woes continue:
$4
Get the latest Tesla stock pricehere.>$4