During a year in which AbbVie pulled off a remarkable feat—increasing revenue by 23% without the benefit of a major COVID-19 product—the company rewarded CEO and Chairman Rick Gonzalez with a pay package worth $23.9 million.
The 68-year-old Gonzalez, one of the longest-tenured and highest-paid CEOs in the industry, has been in charge at AbbVie since it was spun out of Abbott Laboratories in 2013, where he also served as CEO. His 2021 pay disclosure came in AbbVie's proxy (PDF) statement, which was released last week.
Gonzalez was No. 5 on the industry’s CEO pay list in 2020, when he made $24 million. In 2021, while Gonzalez saw increases in his salary from $1.69 million to $1.7 million and in his equity awards from $14.4 million to $15.7 million, his pension value dropped from $2.2 million to $781,000.
In the proxy, AbbVie explained that changes in pension values were “attributable to changes in actuarial assumptions (primarily discount rate and mortality tables) and other factors based on plan design (primarily pay, service and age).”
AbbVie’s other top executives also saw significant drops in their pension value, including Chief Financial Officer Robert Michael, who saw his fall from $3.6 million to $2.5 million. His equity awards also dropped from $6.7 million to $5.3 million as his overall compensation went from $13.5 million in 2020 to $11.7 million last year.
Chief Legal Officer Laura Schumacher and Vice Chairman Michael Severino each saw their equity awards reduced from $7.2 million to $5.3 million. Schumacher’s overall pay went from $17.1 million in 2020 to $12.4 million last year as her pension value fell from $5.7 million to $2.9 million. Severino, who saw a much smaller drop in his pension value, scored $11 million last year after earning $13.4 million in 2020.
Jeffrey Stewart, who took the reins as commercial chief in March of last year, collected $9 million last year.
Matching last year’s compensation for its executives would have been a tall order for AbbVie considering some of the lucrative pay increases it awarded in 2020. After finishing 2020 with a market cap explosion of 44%, AbbVie spread the wealth.
Between 2019 and 2020, Gonzalez’s pay went from $21.6 million to $24 million, while Michael’s increased from $8.8 million to $13.5 million. Schumacher’s jumped from $15.1 million to $17.1 million, and Severino’s went from $9.5 million to $13.4 million.
These days, AbbVie's execs are focused on driving growth for Rinvoq and Skyrizi, which are key to the company's future as it faces the loss of exclusivity in the U.S. for Humira. That med topped the $20 billion mark in global sales for the first time last year.