Dave Ricks

Dave Ricks is among the most powerful and best-paid CEOs in the pharma category, thanks to Eli Lilly’s success with a few key products. The drugmaker is behind the popular weight-loss drug Zepbound, which was approved by the FDA in 2023 and has made billions for the company since then. Sales of Zepbound boosted Ricks’s salary to $114 million last year. (Zepbound sales reached $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024 alone, soaring past the $176 million reported in sales in the same period one year prior.) Eli Lilly is also developing a therapy called orforglipron, a GLP-1 drug in pill form. Promising news about that medicine—a weight-loss drug that wouldn’t require a jab and is more cheaply and easily distributed—sent the stock soaring in April. Ricks personally made headlines this spring when he was among the few CEOs who publicly called for U.S. President Donald Trump to use tools other than import tariffs, such as taxes, to boost the U.S. economy. “We support the U.S. government’s goals to increase domestic investment,” the CEO said on an earnings call. “However, we don’t believe tariffs are the right mechanism.”