CEO pay: can Switzerland compete with the US?

Swiss CEOs are some of the best paid in Europe but compared to peers in the United States, their salaries look modest. Some in the Swiss pharmaceutical industry see this as a problem. This week Novartis shareholders approved a CHF16.2 million ($18.8 million) pay package for CEO Vas Narasimhan. This is nearly double his compensation in 2022, making him one of the best paid CEOs in Europe. This still pales in comparison to what CEOs at some of the biggest US companies rake in annually. The ten highest paid CEOs in the US, including Sundar Pichai of Alphabet and Tim Cook of Apple, each brought home at least $90 million last year. “We see real excesses in the US. We try to find a balance between what is considered to be acceptable and what is being paid out in the rest of the world,” Novartis board chair Joerg Reinhardt told shareholders in Basel on Tuesday. “We have to offer competitive packages on an international scale because we want to have the best people working for us.” This ...