His pay is salary of $1.96 million, and a $2.6 million bonus. The rest is in equity of various packaging.<p>Look, this is pretty much clickbait/outrage-oriented reporting. Sure it sounds ridiculous to most of us but the CEO salary is a drop in the bucket on Pfizer's P&L and it is not the reason that drug prices are high/increasing.
Would there be an article talking about Pfizer raising drug prices if they increased the hourly salary of every employee by $0.06? I seriously doubt it, but that amounts to the same $10.3 million [1]. The amount is insignificant when compared to the revenue of the company. The real story is how a certainly class of people managed to convince all the relevant parties that their work is a hundred times more valuable to the company than that of everyone else.<p>[1] 96,500 employees, 240 working days per year, 8 working hours per day
Article states that the board needed an incentive to keep the CEO on since he was going to retire at 65 otherwise. Wasn’t this an entirely foreseeable outcome? I mean what will be different next year for example? I looked for some market force or exigency that would force the board’s hand but didn’t see any in the article.
I understand the frustration with profit-making companies in a space where human lives hang in the balance. I would prefer instead of attacking the CEOs of these companies, the entrepreneurial sorts who hang out on these boards start competing companies.<p>I don't expect them to compete with Pfizer at the start, Martin Shkreli showed how its possible to get into the drug business for relatively small sums. But instead of jacking up the prices, this new class of founder could show how it's possible to drive costs down using better management and less greedy business models.<p>Bonus points if these startups could release new drugs at OTC prices. My guess is after a few years, founders will start to understand the pressures that guide pharma in a more sympathetic light. What was once seen as wasteful marketing might more charitably seen as cross-subsidy of new drug development.<p>There's a decent amount of waste in the pharma business, but it's also the closest thing modern society has to a goose that lays golden eggs. Sovaldi is going to transform what it means to live with Hepatitis-C. It's incredibly expensive now, but in a decade when the patents expire, there will be a race to the bottom, price-wise.<p>If you don't believe this is the kind of problem that can be solved by startups, perhaps we should consider alternative arrangements. E.g. Could Harvard, with its world class science, business, and law departments turn their talents and $30B endowments towards developing new drugs? Maybe, maybe not, but I'd prefer we build up new models for regularly producing wonder drugs before we tear the old one down.