{"id":553186,"date":"2026-06-25T09:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T09:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/553186\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T09:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T09:16:17","slug":"where-irish-chief-executives-rank-when-it-comes-to-pay-in-the-united-states-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/553186\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Irish chief executives rank when it comes to pay in the United States \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cantillon has always marvelled at the amount of cash chief executives have handed to them.<\/p>\n

For all the talk of Elon Musk<\/a> becoming a trillionaire with the SpaceX listing, there are thousands of chief executives earning what just a few years ago we would have called generational wealth \u2013 the sort of money you would have needed a family office to manage.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s Tesla <\/a>compensation \u2013 which includes the likes of shares and bonuses as well as basic salary \u2013 dwarfs that of the other 391 executives for which data was available, according to a Wall Street Journal report this week. His $158 billion (\u20ac139 billion) compares to $9.9 billion in total for the rest. <\/p>\n

Apart from Musk, seven other bosses saw their total remuneration top $100 million, according to most recent data. <\/p>\n

Notably, the data compares chief executive compensation to the median employee pay in their companies. Musk\u2019s payout at Tesla compares to median staff earnings of just $62,786. For all the bad press the private equity industry gets, Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman\u2019s $126 million packet at least compares more favourably to median pay of $275,000. <\/p>\n

\"\"Has the Irish building sector got themselves hooked on Government subsidies?<\/p>\n

Some notable Irish faces feature in the Journal\u2019s data too. Tony Smurfit<\/a> is ranked 223 on the list, with earnings of $16 million. The median salary for his Smurfit Westrock workers is $60,554. <\/p>\n

He is not far behind CRH\u2019s Jim Mintern, who comes in at 197 with $18 million in total remuneration. In fairness to Mintern, while that number makes him one of the best-paid executives in the building materials industry, CRH has given a total return to shareholders of 37 per cent over the past year. <\/p>\n

Both men trail Adaire Fox-Martin and her package as chief executive of data centre firm Equinix. The former Google Ireland boss received total compensation of $23 million last year. And that was down 38 per cent compared to a year earlier. <\/p>\n

Of course, Flutter chief executive Peter Jackson would feature on this list, but his company is not a member of the S&P 500 index. <\/p>\n

Martina Cheung is not a household name in Irish business circles, but the University of Galway graduate has led financial information firm S&P Global since 2024. She comes in at 298th on the list, with earnings of $13 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cantillon has always marvelled at the amount of cash chief executives have handed to them. For all the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[236855,79,2355,8298,18,1647,112396,19,17,119709,163498,1298,163499],"class_list":["post-553186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-adaire-fox-martin","tag-business","tag-cantillon","tag-crh","tag-eire","tag-elon-musk","tag-equinix","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jim-mintern","tag-smurfit-westrock","tag-tesla","tag-tony-smurfit"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}