Nikesh, Yamini best paid Indian-origin CEOs in US; not Nadella, Pichai

Indian-origin chiefs, Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks and Yamini Rangan of Hubspot are some of 2023’s highest-paid US CEOs as per the C-suite Comp report.

The popular verbatim for Indian-origin US CEOs may mandatorily include Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, yet neither was able to grab a spot in the ranking. Nikesh secured fourth position in the top 10 US CEOs list with an annual disclosed compensation of $151.4 million. Yamini on the other hand in the category of highest-paid female executives secured the eighth spot with earnings of $25.88 million.

While both the CEOs head tech companies, Hubspot made a total revenue of $617.4 million in the first quarter of 2024 and Palo Alto Networks made a total revenue of $1.9 billion in the same quarter.

Arora on the other hand, secured a place in both the rankings, one of which compared the disclosed earnings and the other compared the compensation that they were paid (Compensation Paid).

As per the compensation paid last year, Arora secured the tenth spot with a compensation of $266.4 million. Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, grabbed the first place in this list receiving a compensation of $1.4 billion in 2023. The other executive who earned a billion-dollar figure was Palantir Technologies CEO, Alexander Karp.

The report also compared the total shareholder return of their companies as a mark of the company’s performance against the total disclosed compensation earned by these CEOs over a year. Nikesh’s Palo Alto gave the highest TSR in a year. Arora is among the only four CEOs whose companies outperformed the S&P 500 market index by delivering a higher-than-average TSR not just over a year but also in three and five years.

Yamini is one of the three women CEOs who have spearheaded their companies to outperform the S&P 500 index in delivering better total shareholder returns over a year, three years, and five years.

Analysing compensation trends between the years 2019 and 2023, the report reveals that average CEO compensation increased remarkably in 2021 but dipped in the following year before rising again last year. The analysis aids in understanding the impact of economic conditions on executive pay. Another ranking by the same data analytics firm reveals the stark disparity prevalent between executive compensation and median worker pay with pay ratios being as high as 10,377:1 for Ryan S. Napierski who heads Nu Skin Enterprises, a retail health and personal care company.

Nikesh Arora has had stints at Google and SoftBank before taking over as chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, a cybersecurity company in 2018. After pursuing graduation in electrical engineering at IIT BHU, Arora moved to the US for his postgraduate studies. He is currently married to Ayesha Thapar who is a co-founder of Ettan and Copra restaurants.

Rangan on the other hand pursued a bachelor of science in computer engineering from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, and went on to pursue MBA at Berkeley. She has worked as CCO and VP at Dropbox and Workday.