CFO Pay in the S&P 500
With the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on capital management, the CFO (chief financial officer) role in public companies has taken on greater prominence over the past few months.
We used our CompanyIQ® research platform to review CFO and CEO (chief executive officer) pay in the S&P 500 for the 2015-2019 compensation years. The data shows where the compensation of arguably the second most important executive falls and provides a benchmark with CEO pay.
Our key findings include:
- S&P 500 CFOs averaged $5 million in total compensation for 2019.
- CFO total compensation increased by 20% from 2015 to 2019. The top earning S&P 500 CFO in 2019 made $31 million.
- CFOs, on average, made one-third of CEO compensation.
- Consistent with CEOs, stock awards were the largest component of CFO pay. Technology CFOs dominated as top earners.
- 4% of CFOs in the S&P 500 earned equal to or more than their CEOs in 2019.
- In 2019, the average CFO pay ratio was 90 compared to 263 for CEOs.