LogInThat's a 63% rise compared with last year.
REUTERS_Lucy Nicholson
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received a $30 million pay raise over the past fiscal year, which started in July 2023 and ended in June 2024. This brought his total compensation to $79,106,183, a 63% rise from last year’s $48.5 million.
According to a proxy filing, $71.24 million of stock awards account for most of the total. Non-equity Incentive Plan Compensation is $5.2m, and the base salary is $2.5m, which has remained the same for the past years. The raise mainly comes from the stock awards part, which was $39.24 million last year.
The CEO’s salary directly reflects the company’s business growth, as the filing notes that “since the Board of Directors appointed Mr. Nadella as the third Chief Executive Officer in its history in 2014, Microsoft has nearly tripled revenue to $245.1 billion, nearly quadrupled net income to $88.1 billion, and more than quadrupled diluted earnings per share to $11.80.”
Satya Nadella
The past fiscal year was filled with some milestone events for the company. During this period, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard. The filing says, “Xbox content and services revenue increased 50% driven by 44 points of net impact from the Activision Blizzard Inc. (“Activision Blizzard”) acquisition.”
Despite the sweetness the company had enjoyed from the acquisition, it was a painful start of massive layoffs that shocked the whole gaming industry. Last month, another 650 gaming employees were excluded from the company, which was the second round of massive layoffs, following the first round of this in January, which let go of more than 1,900 staff. Four studios, whose games are loved by many, like Tango Gameworks, developer of Hi-Fi Rush, and Arkane Austin, who made Redfall, were shut down in June. Estimatedly, at least 2,550 former employees had lost their jobs so far.
Besides the CEO, Microsoft’s shareholders also somehow benefited amidst the massive layoffs, as Microsoft increased payouts to shareholders by 10%.
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