He founded the shock gun, and became the highest paid CEO in the world

Rick Smith, co -founder and CEO of Axon Enterprise, manufacturer of the Taser Shock Weapon, led the list of the highest paid executives in S&P 500 in 2024, with a total of $ 165 million, according to annual ranking of the Wall Street Journal. The amount, mainly driven by a package of stocks, surpassed the gains of leaders of large companies such as General Electric, Apple and Blackstone.

Smith’s remuneration was part of a new company program that allows salary to convert into restricted shares, whose value can triple or be reduced to zero, depending on the company’s performance over seven years. The proposal was approved by shareholders in 2023.

Despite being ahead of a smaller company compared to giants in the sector, the executive was the only one in S&P 500 to exceed the $ 100 million mark in the year. Axon shares have risen about 160% in the last 12 months, raising the potential value of the Smith package to about $ 500 million. By March, two of the seven performance criteria had already been hit.

In total, half of the CEOs valued at the survey received US $ 17.1 million or more in 2024 – an increase over the US $ 15.8 million registered in the previous year. The study considered more than 400 S&P 500 companies and used data from Mylogiq.

Among the ten best paid executives, Lawrence Culp Jr. (General Electric), with $ 88.9 million, Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), with $ 84 million, and Tim Cook (Apple), with $ 74.6 million. Tesla’s Elon Musk was in the last position, with a declared compensation of $ 0, due to court disputes on his salary package.

Outside S&P 500, the largest payment was intended for Peter Gassner, from Veeva Systems, which received $ 172.4 million. Shopify’s Tobias Lütke also appears with $ 150 million. Still, 2024 had the smallest number of CEOs with compensation over US $ 100 million since 2016.

See the 10 highest paid CEOs of S&P 500 in 2024:

Fonte: Wall Street Journal