From Eli Lilly’s David Ricks to Pfizer Albert Bourla, the top five highest paid CEOs made a combined $157.8 million in 2025.
The top five highest paid CEOs in pharma totaled $157.8 million in 2025, a 24% increase from the year before. Eli Lilly’s high-flying chief executive David Ricks led the pack yet again.
Ricks’ compensation package was valued at $36.7 million—a 26% increase from the year prior. Below him is Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato with $32.6 million.
The top five CEOs received the bulk of their compensation in the form of stock awards, which are not immediately paid out. Base salaries ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 million.
Below, BioSpace profiles the top five highest paid CEOs in pharma.
1. Lilly’s David Ricks
2025 compensation: $36.7 million
YoY change: 26%
2024 rank: 1
The highest paid CEO by far, Eli Lilly’s Ricks spent 2025 doing a victory lap. His company’s market cap rose 37% over 2025, briefly reaching $1 trillion, becoming the first pharma to do so.
The bulk of Ricks’ pay came in the form of $23.3 million in stock awards. His base salary was $1.7 million.
Justifying the compensation, Lilly pointed to the company’s 45% revenue increase to $65 billion and an 86% increase in earnings per share to $24.41 apiece. Ricks also oversaw a vast clinical program that produced positive clinical data across 25 Phase 3 trials.
Ricks was one of pharma’s main figureheads as the industry responded to pressure from President Donald Trump to onshore manufacturing and lower drug prices in 2025. Ricks appeared at the White House alongside his rival, Novo Nordisk’s Mike Maziar Doustdar, in November 2025 after both companies agreed to drop the price of their competing GLP-1 drugs.
Lilly also put forward $22.7 billion in investments across the U.S., the Netherlands and India last year, with much of the future capacity dedicated to the company’s burgeoning weight loss portfolio.
Ricks spent some of Lilly’s GLP-1 cash with key 2025 deals including Verve Therapeutics, Scorpion Therapeutics, SiteOne Therapeutics and Adverum Biotechnologies. The company also expanded into AI technology—a field that has seen plenty of activity from the Indianapolis pharma this year, too.
On the sales side, Ricks has been pushing Lilly into direct-to-consumer marketing, with the company’s weight loss products being offered to patients for self-pay. While all this was going on, Ricks dipped into financial podcasts and was a high-flying guest on the conference circuit to discuss his leadership and Lilly’s limitless ambition.
It’s no doubt that, as Lilly breaks the pharma mold, the board is keen to keep Ricks happy at the helm.
2. Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato
2025 compensation: $32.6 million
YoY change: 33%
2024 rank: 2
For overseeing the largest healthcare company in the world, J&J’s Duato took home $32.6 million. He helped exceed operational goals and drive J&J to the top of the list of pharmas by revenue, with $94.2 billion for 2025. This value, of course, factors in all of J&J’s units, which includes medtech.
Duato’s pay package included $15 million in stock awards on top of $1.6 million in base salary. Because J&J exceeded expectations, Duato will see his salary increase to $1.75 million for 2026.
The board noted in the proxy report that Duato’s work to overcome J&J’s looming patent cliff, strategic deals, talent development and succession planning and advancing the company’s R&D portfolio.
Duato’s work to overcome J&J’s looming patent cliff, strategic deals, talent development and succession planning, and advancing the company’s R&D portfolio were cited as reasons behind the robust pay package, the board noted in the proxy report.
J&J faced the same policy pressures as Lilly, but the company held off on reaching a Most Favored Nation deal until January of this year. Duato spoke out against the Trump administration’s manufacturing policies, urging the president to adopt tax policy changes instead. Nevertheless, J&J did announce $55 billion in new and expanded U.S. investments.
3. AbbVie’s Robert Michael
2025 compensation: $32.5 million
YoY change: 76%
2024 rank: 11
AbbVie once had pharma’s best-selling drug in Humira. But that inflammation and immunology heavyweight is now essentially forgotten as CEO Robert Michael and his team have raised Skyrizi and Rinvoq up in its place.
Michael took the helm in July 2025 from long-time CEO Rick Gonzalez. After his first full-year as chief executive, it seems the board—which he now chairs—is satisfied with its leadership choice.
While Michael helped AbbVie deliver on growth, the board rewarded him with a 76% increase in his compensation package. His base salary was on par with his peers at $1.7 million while his stock options were valued at $13.2 million. Michael’s higher pay for 2025 reflects his rise to board chairman and a one-time pay out in retirement benefits upon his 55th birthday.
Michael has ascended from the No. 11 spot of the highest paid pharma CEOs to No. 3.
Like his peers, Michael has been under pressure from the U.S. government to boost manufacturing. The company has committed $100 billion in R&D and capital investments for the next decade, the CEO said on the company’s first quarter earnings call.
Michael has overseen a number of business transactions, too. On the earnings call, he pointed to Capstan Therapeutics as a way to rebuild AbbVie’s immunology powerhouse beyond Skyrizi and Rinvoq.
“We have a tremendous amount of confidence given our long-term experience here,” said the 30-year veteran, who served at Abbott before the company split off the therapeutics division into what is now known as AbbVie. “We obviously have a commercial powerhouse, but I’d say our R&D organization understands the space very well.”
4. Gilead Sciences’ Daniel O’Day
2025 compensation: $28.4 million
YoY change: 20%
2024 rank: 5
The strong performance of Gilead Sciences’ HIV portfolio, led by record sales of Biktarvy, helped Daniel O’Day secure a 20% pay increase for 2025. The CEO’s compensation package was $28.4 million, just shy of his peers in the $30 million club.
O’Day received $1.8 million in base salary and $15.2 million in stock awards for 2025.
Gilead’s Yeztugo has also made a splash, securing initial approvals for pre-exposure prophylaxis. Analysts at the time heralded the approval as a major moment for the treatment and prevention of HIV.
In oncology, Gilead has been preparing to launch Trodelvy in more indications including first line metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. Anito-cel has also been submitted for advanced multiple myeloma with an FDA decision date in December.
“Gilead advanced the most robust pipeline in its history in 2025,” according to the company’s proxy statement.
5. Pfizer’s Albert Bourla
2025 compensation: $27.6 million
YoY change: 12%
2024 rank: 2
Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla has fallen down the list of highest paid CEOs despite commanding a compensation package of $27.6 million. This represents a 12% increase over 2024—far less than the pay jumps enjoyed by many of Bourla’s peers.
Pfizer is undergoing a massive restructuring to prepare for looming loss of exclusivity for key products. 2025 was a year of rebuilding, with the business development team executing a number of high-profile deals—chief of which was the nearly $10 billion acquisition of weight loss biotech Metsera.
That’s because Novo Nordisk tried to swoop in with a better bid. Bourla was forced into the spotlight, with public and legal jabs thrown around as the two companies battled it out for the young—but promising—biotech.
Pfizer needed the deal badly. After initially trying to join the GLP-1 race using in-house assets, the company’s efforts stumbled in the clinic. To keep pace, Pfizer had to buy, and Bourla wanted Metsera.
This wasn’t the only time in 2025 that Bourla was thrust into the limelight. He also headed to the White House—the first of his pharma peers to do so in response to the Most Favored Nation drug pricing scheme—to secure a deal with the Trump administration.
Despite appearing chummy with the administration, earlier this year Bourla directed criticism at U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s policies on vaccines. He said Pfizer’s drug pricing and oncology drug development discussions had been fine with HHS under Kennedy, but “it’s a different world when you start discussing vaccines. . . . There’s almost like a religion there.”
Still, Bourla leads one of the world’s most prominent pharma companies. He received a base salary of $1.8 million and stock awards valued at $9.4 million. His option awards were the highest of the group at $9 million.
Bourla has led the New York pharma since 2019, the year before the pandemic changed the world—and Pfizer’s business. Asked if he will step aside anytime soon during a first quarter earnings call in early May, Bourla said he has more work to do.
“I was very proud [of] what we were able to achieve with COVID, but then if you’re spoiled with this feeling of satisfaction, you want to do it again,” the CEO said. “So I’m planning to do it again, and hopefully with cancer and obesity and vaccines this time.”
