AstraZeneca CEO paid less than peers

The economy may be moving upward, but AstraZeneca's executive pay will stay frozen. For the second year in a row, CEO David Brennan (photo) won't get a salary increase, and nor will his colleagues whose job descriptions haven't changed. That puts Brennan's 2010 salary at £972,900, or $1.45 million.

However, Brennan's total compensation has grown a bit: Including bonus, stock awards, and other forms of pay, his package grew to $4.9 million for 2009, up from $4.7 million in 2008. That's an increase of about 4 percent.

Compared with other pharma executives, Brennan's compensation runs more to the European model: Generous, but not nearly as lavish as American CEO pay. So while AstraZeneca's revenues rank it among the top 10 drugmakers, his pay slides farther down on the scale. Compare $4.9 million with the $13 million Eli Lilly chief John Lechleiter (photo) earned in 2008, or the $25 million Bristol-Myers Squibb CEO Jim Cornelius (photo) took down for the same period.

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