Brendan Kennedy knew early on that his bet on marijuana would take years to pay off. Kennedy told Bloomberg in 2012, “It’s either career suicide or it’s the smartest decision we’ve ever made in our lives—and we won’t know for three to five years”.
The success didn’t arrive for six years. Tilray Inc. became the first cannabis company to be listed on the U.S. exchange and ended the year with a 315% gain. That made its 47-year-old CEO, the second-highest-paid executive in 2018 among companies traded on U.S. exchanges, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index.
10] Stephen Kaufer, TripAdvisor. Compensation: $47,933,462
TripAdvisor was founded in 2000. It was designed to personalise researched travel options. They show ratings and reviews for travel destinations along with restaurants, hotels and more at the destinations.
Kaufer is the co-founder, CEO and president of TripAdvisor since being founded. His base pay and bonuses added up to around $1.05 million. Stock awards valued at $28.6 million and option awards valued at $18.3 million bring his total compensation up to almost $48 million.
9] Stephan Angel, Linde PLC. Compensation: $66,190,743
Stephen F. Angel serves as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Director of the Lined, PLC. He became the Chief Executive Officer in October, 2018. Prior to that, he was Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Praxair, Inc. since 2007. Linde plc operates as an industrial gas company in primarily North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. Linde plc was founded in 1879 and is based in Guildford, the United Kingdom.
8] Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone Group LP. Compensation: $69,147,028
7] Michael Rapino, Live Nation Entertainment Compensation: $70,615,760
Live Nation Entertainment was the corporation created by the highly controversial 2010 merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Its subsidiaries include Roc Nation as well.
Rapino is CEO, president and director of Live Nation Entertainment and his base pay is around $2.4 million, along with $7.7 million in bonuses and over $58.6 million in stock award value.
6] Hock E. Tan, Broadcom. Compensation: $103,211,163
Since 2o06 Tan Hock Eng is the CEO and president of Broadcom, a company that specialises in infrastructure software solutions.
He graduated from Harvard Business School and his history in business includes high management positions at PepsiCo, General Motors and Commodore International. His base salary as Broadcom CEO is $1.1 million. But with a nearly $4 million bonus and over $98.3 million in stock value, his total compensation is $103 million.
5] David Zaslav Discovery Inc. Compensation: $122,085,568
4] Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks Inc. Compensation: $130,730,811
3] Tim Cook, Apple Inc. Compensation: $141,657,076
2] Brendan Kennedy, Tilray Inc. Compensation $256,006,946
1] Elon Musk, Tesla Inc. Compensation: $513,278,929
Elon musk who is famous for his electric car brand Tesla is at the top of this list. He first started out with Zip 2 that was bought by Compaq. He then started x.com and merged with Paypal. When Paypal was sole to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion dollars, Musk received US$165 million. He then used that to start Space X and Tesla.
Tesla Inc. posted a $1 billion loss in 2018, and Elon never wanted a salary (he is paid minimum wage to abide by the law but he doesn’t cash the checks).
99.9% of his compensation last year, Bloomberg says, was in the form of stock options tied to performance goals. In January of last year, Tesla announced a 10-year grant of stock options that vest in 12 tranches where each tranche vests only if market cap and operational milestones are met.
