2025 Filings Show Robust CEO Pay Increases at U.S. Large Cap Companies
NEW YORK (April 24, 2025) – ISS-Corporate, a leading provider of compensation, governance, cyber risk monitoring, and sustainability offerings to help companies improve shareholder value and reduce risk, today announced the results of a preliminary analysis of CEO pay changes at S&P 500 companies with shareholder meetings on or after January 1, 2025. The study, […]
Subodh Mishra is Global Head of Communications at ISS STOXX. This post is based on an ISS-Corporate memorandum by Roy Saliba, Managing Director, and Audrey Dedrick, Senior Associate, at ISS-Corporate.
NEW YORK (April 24, 2025) – ISS-Corporate, a leading provider of compensation, governance, cyber risk monitoring, and sustainability offerings to help companies improve shareholder value and reduce risk, today announced the results of a preliminary analysis of CEO pay changes at S&P 500 companies with shareholder meetings on or after January 1, 2025.
The study, which analyzed 320 S&P 500 companies at which the CEO was in the same role for the current and previous filing years, found a median CEO pay increase of 7.5 percent from the 2024 to 2025 filing periods. This rate of growth represents a slight decrease from the 9.2 percent rise observed between the 2023 and 2024 filing periods, suggesting a continued robust growth in CEO pay levels despite recent market turbulence.
Median pay for CEOs at the included large cap companies stood at $16.8 million, the analysis found. More than 69 percent of S&P 500 CEOs in the study received a pay increase while compensation fell for around 31 percent of them. For the segment of companies that increased pay for their chief executives, the median change was 13.2 percent, while for the segment of companies where pay dropped, compensation decreased by a median of 7.2 percent.
