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| Amgen CEO Robert Bradway |
In a year when several of his peers won big payoffs for one extraordinary reason or another, Amgen ($AMGN) CEO Robert Bradway earned just about as much as he had the previous year, give or take a few hundred thousand. Small comfort--though some comfort, perhaps--to the thousands of employees facing job cuts as Amgen prepares for biosimilar competition to its top-selling meds.
Actually, Bradway's pay package has remained fairly steady for the past three years with a small-but-steady uptick, from $13.57 million in 2012 to $13.96 million in 2014. His fellow executives weren't as fortunate, however. All of the Amgen execs still serving with Bradway took a pay cut for 2014, with commercial chief Anthony Hooper's compensation sinking the most. Only Jonathan Peacock--who left the company last July--collected a big increase, and that was because of his severance pay.
Meanwhile, some 2,900 Amgen employees are either facing layoffs or have already lost their jobs. Last July, the company said manufacturing and R&D sites in Colorado and Washington State would be shuttered or cut back, while its headquarters staff and sales force would both shrink.
That's one reason why Bradway and his team met most of their goals for 2014. According to the company's proxy statement, Amgen hit its cost-cutting targets last year, and beat its profits goal with $6.7 billion in adjusted net income. Its more than $20 billion in revenue surpassed that goal, as the aging blockbuster Enbrel continued to churn out cash. Late-stage R&D? Check, what with its PCSK9 med evolocumab and psoriasis med brodalumab advancing through the pipeline. Where it fell short, according to the proxy: Early-stage R&D and follow-up drug delivery development, a.k.a. lifecycle management.
Nonetheless, commercial chief Anthony Hooper has seen his pay shrink to $5.6 million in 2014 from $8.6 million in 2012 (and $6.18 million in 2013). Sean Harper, who heads up Amgen's R&D, racked up $5.34 million in 2014 pay, down from $6.09 million in 2012. Operations chief Madhavan Balachandran collected a compensation package worth almost $5 million, down from $5.8 million for 2013.
Apart from Bradway, Amgen's best-paid executive was its new CFO, Anthony Meline, who relocated to join the company in Thousand Oaks, CA. His $10.6 million package included a $1 million signing bonus, relocation expenses and stock awards worth almost $7 million.
- see the Amgen proxy
Special Reports: Top 15 highest-paid biopharma CEOs of 2013 - Robert Bradway, Amgen | Top 15 pharma companies by 2014 revenue - Amgen