WASHINGTON: In the midst of the debate over the outrageous sums being earned by top managements across corporates becomes more and more transparent and is drawing the ire of many, Nikesh Arora, the India born CEO of Palo Alto Networks, has been ranked as America’s second-highest-paid CEO in 2023.
A total of 17 Indian descent CEOs are in the top 500 rankings, according to an analysis published by The Wall Street Journal on May 21.
Shantanu Narayen of Adobe is the second-highest-paid Indian-descent CEO, ranked 11 overall. Arora and Narayen earned $151.43 million and $44.93 million, respectively, more than Tesla’s Elon Musk, who did not receive any compensation in 2023, according to the report.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg earned $24.40 million, while Alphabet’s India-born head Sundar Pichai earned $8.80 million during the period under review.
A product of Delhi’s Air Force Public School, Arora first drew international attention as the chief business officer at Google, which he left in 2014 to head SoftBank with a reported compensation that was said to be a record for Japan.
Arora has been heading Palo Alto Networks, a cyber security company, since 2018. His compensation consists mostly of equity awards that include shares granted over three years.
Narayen, who was born and raised in Hyderabad, has been the CEO of Adobe since 2007 after joining the company in 1998.
Hock Tan of Broadcom topped the list with earnings of $162 million.
Ranked third, fourth, and fifth among Indian Americans were Sanjay Malhotra of Micron Technology (63rd, $25.28 million), Ajei Gopal of Ansys (66th, $24.63 million), and Reshma Kewalramani of Vertex Pharmaceuticals (118th, $20.59 million).
