In a year when many drug CEOs saw their pay packages decline or remain stagnant, Amgen chief Kevin Sharer (photo) got a 38 percent bump. Sharer's 2010 compensation came to $21.1 million, up from $15.3 million in 2009--a figure that far outclasses several pharma CEOs' pay packages, even at far larger companies.
Sharer won a roughly four percent increase in base salary to $1.7 million, and his cash bonus amounted to just over $3.6 million, about four percent less than in 2009, according to an SEC filing. But his stock and option awards shot up nearly 65 percent to almost $15 million. To put this in context, Amgen grew sales by almost three percent for 2010, to more than $15 billion, but profits were flat at about $4.6 billion. The company did manage to launch two promising new drugs: the osteoporosis remedy Prolia and its twin sister Xgeva, which is approved as an adjunct cancer therapy.
Meanwhile, Bristol-Myers Squibb chief Lamberto Andreotti's (photo) compensation amounted to almost $11 million, while GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty (photo) got $3.75 million, $1.5 million less than 2009 because the company missed profit targets.
- see Amgen's SEC filing
- read the story in the Ventura County Star
- get more from Dow Jones