Alex Gorsky earned a whop­ping $29.6M in 2020 as drug­mak­er piv­ot­ed around Covid-19 vac­cine R&D

In near­ly nine years helm­ing J&J, CEO Alex Gorsky has watched his drug­mak­er morph in­to the sin­gle largest com­pa­ny in bio­phar­ma. But 2020 was a year like no oth­er, re­quir­ing J&J’s mas­sive ma­chin­ery to piv­ot around de­vel­op­ing a Covid-19 vac­cine. For Gorsky, that ef­fort proved par­tic­u­lar­ly lu­cra­tive.

Gorsky raked in $29.58 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion in 2020 — about a 16.6% pay bump from his over­all pay pack­age the pri­or year, ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing. That’s al­so a 47% bump from Gorsky’s pay just two years ago, un­der­scor­ing his sud­den vault to the top of the charts for bio­phar­ma CEO pay.

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