It’s a sign of the lucrative times in the biopharma industry that the pay for Regeneron’s co-founders and top two executives—Len Schleifer, M.D., Ph.D., and George Yancopoulos, M.D., Ph.D.—seems unusually low.
While CEO Schleifer collected $7 million in 2022, chief scientific officer Yancopoulos pulled down $6.6 million, according (PDF) to the company’s most recent SEC filing.
Seven players on the New York Knicks basketball team are earning more this season. So are the CEOs of companies in Regeneron’s compensation peer group, which includes AbbVie, Biogen, Eli Lilly, Merck, Gilead and Bristol Myers Squibb.
But fear not for Regeneron’s dynamic duo. It was just two years earlier when Schleifer nabbed a whopping $135.3 million and Yancopoulos was close behind at $134.4 million.
Those figures came by way of enormous, front-loaded equity awards that Regeneron handed to Schleifer and Yancopoulos in 2020. Under the company’s compensation plan, it will not provide equity awards to Schleifer and Yancopoulos until after 2025.
The awards are paying off nicely however. In 2021, when Schleifer’s pay from Regeneron came to $6.5 million, he also made a jaw-dropping $446 million in exercising option awards to acquire more than 920,000 shares of company stock at a predetermined low price.
As for Schleifer’s 2022 pay, he made $1.8 million in salary and $4.1 million in incentive-plan compensation, which is a measure of individual and company performance during the year.
Yancopoulos also earned $1.8 million in salary and $4.1 million in incentive-plan pay. While Schleifer made $1.1 million in all other compensation, Yancopoulos earned $650,000 in the category.
Regeneron’s other top executives are receiving annual equity awards in a traditional manner and saw their pay increase in 2022. Research chief Andrew Murphy, Ph.D., earned $9.1 million last year, up from $7.1 million in 2021. Chief financial officer Robert Landry collected $8.8 million, up from $8.3 million the previous year.
Industrial operations and product support chief Daniel Van Plew had a small increase in pay to $8.9 million last year. In her first year as a named officer for executive compensation purposes, commercial chief Marion McCourt collected $6.9 million.
Last week, Regeneron revealed the retirement of board chairman Roy Vagelos, M.D., after 29 years. Vagelos, 93, brought big pharma experience from Merck and helped build Regeneron into a biotech powerhouse. Going forward, Schleifer and Yancopoulos will take over as co-chairmen.