An unknown executive of a low-key company is the highest paid CEO in the US
Coherent chief James Anderson’s compensation amounted to $101.5 million in 2024 despite holding the job for less than a month that fiscal year
Forget about Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai or Jamie Dimon.... The highest paid CEO of a U.S. listed company in 2024, according to available data, is an unknown executive of a company largely unheard of by the general public, although it enjoys a great reputation in the sector. He is Jim Anderson, the brand-new CEO of the optical materials and semiconductor firm Coherent, which is not even a member of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, the stock market indicator that groups the 500 largest U.S. companies. His high salary was also a bit of an accident.
The company is headquartered in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, a small town of about 1,500 people in Butler County, where Donald Trump suffered an assassination attempt last year. A few weeks before that incident, the company announced the signing of Jim Anderson as its new CEO in a press release on June 3, 2024. But the release did not make its way into any of the major media outlets.
Coherent closes its fiscal year in June, so Anderson was the head of the company for less than a month in that fiscal year. However, his annual compensation report reflects an astronomical payout.
His 2024 pro‑rated cash salary was $81,538, but he also received a signing bonus of $500,000 in cash and a stock incentive package valued at $100.9 million. In the compensation report, the company complains that the package was designed to make up for what Anderson lost upon leaving semiconductor firm Lattice and that its original value was much lower, but that as the company’s stock price skyrocketed with the signing, the stock awards grew in value.
“Ironically, the high value of the incentive award noted below was due in large part to the market’s favorable response to the news of Mr. Anderson’s appointment,” the company said.
On the list of the highest paid CEOs in 2024, Anderson is followed by Starbucks’ Brian Niccol, at $95.8 million. Next come the CEOs of GE Aerospace, Paramount, Blackstone, Microsoft and Apple. The list does not include the individuals who for now is, at $139 million, the highest paid executive in the United States in 2024, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja, because he is not the company’s CEO.
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