14 DAY TRIAL // Being the number one executive in the world’s top software company is clearly a difficult task, but it’s definitely worth it if we look at how much he or she earns every year.
Statistics provided by the Wall Street Journal show that Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO since last year when it replaced Steve Ballmer at the helm of the company, is the second best paid CEO in the world with yearly earnings worth $84.3 million.
Obviously, this paycheck doesn’t include his salary exclusively, but also stock options and other compensations that he received at the end of the year, but it’s still more money than any of us can imagine.
The world’s number one CEO in terms of the money he makes every year is Michael Fries of Liberty Global who received last year no less than $112.2 million.
Satya Nadella, however, is the best paid new CEO, which makes it a lot more special because other new CEOs are far behind him. Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf is the second highest paid new CEO with compensation of $60.7 million and a shareholder return of 13.7%, enough to also become the fourth highest paid CEO overall.
Nadella’s tough mission
Some think that Satya Nadella doesn’t deserve his salary, but there’s no doubt that the new CEO changed Microsoft from the ground up, trying not only to push the company towards a completely new approach, but also to expand to new businesses that would increase long-term profitability.
Under Nadella’s guidance, Microsoft is becoming a much more important player in the mobile industry and is well positioned to compete for hardware too, with several devices now in the pipeline running a completely overhauled operating system that would be at the core of the company’s new strategy.
Microsoft has also improved in enterprise and the cloud and the software giant managed to successfully integrated Nokia’s Devices and Services into its own business, completing a massive restructuring process that included the layoff of no less than 18,000 workers.