Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is no longer an 'overpaid CEO' as his pay dipped in 2022, shareholder advocacy group says
- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's pay dropped from $212 million in 2021 to $1.3 million in 2022.
- Jassy's equity award in 2022 landed him on the "100 Most Overpaid CEOs" list.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy will likely fall off the 2023 list of the most overpaid CEOs, according to a manager at the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow.
Amazon's recently filed proxy statement showed Jassy's total pay dropped from $212 million in 2021 to $1.3 million. His base pay had increased 80% from $175,000 to $317,500. The decrease in compensation, according to Amazon, partly stemmed from not receiving a stock grant last year. On top of that, part of his shares awarded the year before won't vest until this year, while the rest will vest between 2026 and the end of 2031.
Jassy first made As You Sow's list of the "100 Most Overpaid CEOs" in 2022, coming in at No. 9 after receiving his new-hire award of $212 million, which is 6,474 times that of employees with median pay of $32,855.
With a salary of $1.3 million this year, Jassy now makes 38 times more than employees with a median total compensation of $34,195. While he still makes much more than other Amazon employees, the value of his compensation package has shrunk significantly.
"I doubt he'll make the list this year," Rosanna Landis Weaver, the director of wage justice and executive pay at As You Sow, said in an email.
For comparison, then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' $1.7 million compensation in 2020 was 58 times the company's median pay at the time, $29,007.
Amazon promoted Jassy to CEO in 2021. With that came a bump in pay that wound up skewing the ratio between the CEO and employees with the median pay. Two advisory firms, the Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, urged shareholders to vote against Jassy's raise last year, calling it "excessive."
Jassy's pay is considerably low when compared with the CEOs of other Big Tech companies. Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook was paid $99.4 million, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella got $55 million.