The chief executives of AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson are now among the highest-paid pharma leaders after pay bumps pushed their 2025 compensations past $30 million.
Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato and AbbVie’s Robert Michael both enjoyed a hefty pay bump last year to more than $30 million, making them among the highest-paid CEOs across the pharma industry.
In 2025, AbbVie paid Michael $32.5 million, a 75% jump from his $18.5 million paycheck in 2024, according to the pharma’s proxy statement. 2025 was just Michael’s second year at AbbVie’s helm. He was appointed in February 2024 after the previous CEO, Richard Gonzalez, who had led AbbVie since it was formed in 2013, stepped down.
On July 1, 2025, Gonzalez also retired from AbbVie’s board and gave his seat as chairman to Michael.
The bulk of Michael’s compensation last year came from stock and option awards, which together earned him $16.5 million. Michael also received a $5.2 million incentive bonus that buffed up his basic salary of $1.7 million. Michael fell one spot shy of cracking the top 10 highest-paid CEOs in 2024, as per a BioSpace tally.
AbbVie has good reason to reward Michael so handsomely. The pharma has expertly managed the loss of exclusivity of its immunology giant Humira, once the world’s most valuable pharma franchise, which started seeing sales erode in 2024 after biosimilars entered the market.
Humira’s torch has now been passed to the IL-23 drug Skyrizi, indicated for severe plaque psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease. In 2025, Skyrizi sales jumped 49.9% year-on-year, earning $17.56 billion and ranking as the industry’s fifth-best-selling drug. Also boosting AbbVie’s earnings was the JAK inhibitor Rinvoq, which made $8.3 billion last year.
Unlike Michael, Duato has long been a highly paid pharma CEO, ranking second on BioSpace‘s list in 2024 at $24.6 million, alongside Pfizer’s Albert Bourla and just behind Eli Lilly’s David Ricks. In 2025, Duato’s total compensation jumped to $32.76 million, composed mainly of a $20.9 million windfall in stock and option awards, according to J&J’s proxy statement. Incentives added another $4.3 million on top of his $1.6 million base pay.
Duato has been leading the pharma since November 2022.
As in the case of AbbVie, J&J has had a good year. With total sales of $94.19 billion in 2025, it continues to be pharma’s top-earning company, reporting year-on-year growth of 6%. A big driver of the company’s success is its cancer drug Darzalex, which brought in $14.3 billion last year, just behind AbbVie’s Skyrizi.
