Uber gave CEO Dara Khosrowshahi $45 million in total pay last year, but it paid its COO even more

Troy Wolverton

Apr 12, 2019, 03:18 IST

Uber gave CEO Dara Khosrowshahi $45 million in total pay last year, but it paid its COO even more

Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

Uber gave CEO Dara Khosrowshahi a $45.3 million pay package last year.

Uber paid its top five executives $143 million in total compensation last year.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's pay package was $45 million, but he wasn't Uber's top-paid executive.
That was Chief Operating Officer Barney Harford, who received $47.3 million in total compensation.
Uber disclosed the salaries as part of the S-1 document it filed as part of its proposed initial public offering.
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Dara Khosrowshahi was Uber's $45 million man last year.

But even with that kind of compensation, he still wasn't the top-paid executive at the company in 2018. That title goes to Barney Harford, the company's chief operating officer, whose salary package topped Khosrowshahi's by $2.3 million.

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Uber disclosed the salaries of its top executives as part of its initial public offering paperwork, which it made public on Thursday. The company's IPO could give it a valuation of more than $100 billion.

Read this: Uber has filed to go public in what could be the biggest IPO in years

The San Francisco startup handed out $143 million in total compensation to its top five executives last year, nearly all of which came in the form of stock awards.

Khosrowshahi, for example, received a $1 million salary last year and a $2 million bonus. Uber also gave him three restricted stock grants that it collectively valued at $40.1 million. Additionally, it paid $2 million to provide him with security; reimbursed him for $89,000 of commuting, relocation, and temporary housing costs; and gave him another $98,357 to pay the taxes on those reimbursements.

The big pay came despite massive operating losses

Harford's pay package contained a similar mix of components. Uber paid him $500,000 in salary and gave him a $1 million bonus. It also gave him restricted stock worth $26.3 million and stock options worth $19.6 million. The company paid security-related costs for him of $189,137, reimbursed him for $40,236 worth of temporary housing costs, and gave him another $31,347 to pay the taxes on that reimbursement.

The ranks of Uber's top-compensated officers was skewed a bit by the fact that two of them only worked for the company for part of the year. Chief Financial Officer Nelson Chai, who took home a total pay package of $28 million, started in September, while Chief People Officer Nikki Krishnamurthy, who got a total compensation package of $9.7 million, started in October.

Rounding out the top five was Thuan Pham, Uber's chief technology officer, who got $12.7 million in total pay last year.

The hefty salaries came despite the fact that the company, which has struggled to operate profitably, saw its operations burn through $3 billion in cash for the year. Although Uber turned a profit for the year, that was largely due to the sale of some of its foreign assets to rivals.

The disclosure of the massive pay packages follows complaints from the company's drivers about low pay and a study indicating that average driver pay for such services has dropped markedly in recent years to just $783 a month.