With the passage of another year in the biz, and another slate of company earnings stacked up against one another, Fierce is finishing the 2025 tally by laying out the annual rankings of the top-paid CEOs among the industry’s heavyweights.
Last year marked a period of upheaval for much of the industry, as the second Trump administration leveled drastic cuts to federal health agencies and research funding, all amid seemingly head-scratching pivots in policy and approach from key institutions like the FDA.
All the while, threats of pharmaceutical import tariffs—and a renewed drug pricing push from President Donald Trump—continued to apply pressure, sending drugmakers and executives scrambling to adapt to the new sense of normal.
Nevertheless, the CEOs of many of the companies included on this year’s pay roster managed to eke out accords with the White House before the year was done, or shortly thereafter as negotiations played out in the background.
One consistent placement in the rankings came from Eli Lilly’s David Ricks, whose nearly decade-long rung at the Indianapolis drug giant has lifted the company to new heights in the wake of the GLP-1 boom in diabetes and obesity.
As always, Fierce has tried to focus more squarely on the commercial side of the drug business for our report. Naturally, however, there are multiple ways to compile rankings for biopharma CEO pay, and in many cases, leaders of smaller outfits that underwent acquisitions—or who simply leverage options strategically—may score sizeable, yet frequently one-off, payouts.
We’re always looking for ways to improve our rankings and how we consider CEO compensation. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to drop a line to fkansteiner@questex.com . As always, thank you for reading! We hope you enjoy the report.
Editor’s note: To focus on the commercial side of the drug business, this report only includes CEOs from commercial pharmaceutical companies with market caps of $20 billion or greater.
