At 20 S&P 500 companies, the CFO earned 50% or more of what the CEO was paid in 2022

It pays to be a CFO.

Fortune reviewed compensation numbers collected by data company Equilar for the pay ratios between CEOs and other C-suite executives at S&P 500 companies in 2022. I then looked up the 2023 proxy statements listed on each company’s website. I found that for at least 20 companies, the CFO earned 50% or more of the CEO’s total compensation for 2022. 

Every company has its own approach to executive compensation each year based on the decision of the board of directors, with input from shareholders. But in 2022 the highest CFO-CEO pay ratios I found was at Gen Digital. The pay of CFO Natalie Derse was $12.1 million, which was about 89% of CEO Vincent Pilette’s pay of $13.5 million.

The Walt Disney Company paid Christine M. McCarthy, then CFO, $20.2 million, approximately 83% of former CEO Bob Chapek’s pay of $24.2 million. In June, Disney announced McCarthy would be stepping down from her role and taking a family medical leave of absence, and Kevin Lansberry, EVP and CFO of Disney Parks, experiences and products, began as interim CFO on July 1. At Disney, Bob Iger returned as CEO in November 2022, when his successor Chapek, stepped down.

In my colleague Geoff Colvin’s analysis of Equilar’s data on pay ratios between CEOs and all C-suite positions, he found gains among CFOs were the largest. In Colvin’s analysis, he found that among the 10 companies in the Fortune 20 that shared the salaries of both CEO and CFO over the past 10 years, the CFO’s pay has risen from an average of 34% of the CEO’s pay in 2012 to 44% of the CEO’s pay in 2022. 

“There’s less financial incentive to be a CEO,” Laszlo Bock, former HR chief at Google and cofounder of Humu, a maker of HR-related software, told Colvin. “The compensation of the layer below the CEO has risen at a higher rate than the CEO.”

The finance field, overall, had a good payday in 2022. I recently talked with Mariam Lamech, director of survey research at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) about the organization’s compensation report that found treasury and finance professionals received a 5% increase in their 2022 base salaries, up from 4.4% in 2021. It was the largest increase seen in the past 10 years, according to AFP.

The future of finance may include healthy compensation.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Big deal

Research by S&P Global Market Intelligence found that in July, global private equity and venture capital deal volume declined 36% to 828, down from 1,290 a year ago. So far this year, through July 31, deal value was down 44% to $275.89 billion from $493.42 billion during the same period last year. And the number of deals dropped to 6,850 from nearly 11,000 for the measured period since 2021, according to the report. 

Going deeper

The ESG debate continues. "How the Share of Green Stocks in Institutional Portfolios Is Vastly Overstated," an article in Wharton's business journal, highlights a new study which found ESG-related tilts are just 6% of the assets under management of top institutions. The researchers argue there's a large gap between actual ESG investments and those that are reported.

Leaderboard

Michael Monahan was named CFO at The Beauty Health Company (Nasdaq: SKIN), home to flagship brand Hydrafacial, effective Aug. 10. He succeeds Liyuan Woo, who is leaving BeautyHealth but will remain as an advisor until Sept. 1 to assist with the transition. Monahan has nearly 15 years of experience as a public and private company CFO and more than 25 years of accounting and financial management experience. Most recently, he served as CFO of Casper Sleep (NYSE: CSPR), following its IPO. Before that he served as CFO of Nutrisystem (Nasdaq: NTRI). 

Jeff Wilson was named CFO at Captain D's, a fast-casual seafood restaurant. Wilson spent the past 15 years at Cracker Barrel, most recently as the company's VP of finance and CFO of the Emerging Brands group. He also served as corporate controller and VP of operations analysis for the company. Before Cracker Barrel, Wilson joined Metromedia Restaurant Group in Dallas directly after college and was there a decade, working his way up to CFO. 

Overheard

"I think we can all agree Elon isn't serious and it's time to move on. I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon won't confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead. If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I'm going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously."

—Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote Sunday on Threads in reference to Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter). Zuckerberg is dismissing Musk for allegedly delaying their anticipated charity "cage match," which involves wrestling in a closed-in space that combatants aim to escape from, CNBC reported.