The two highest-paid U.S. biopharmaceutical CEOs of 2020 led companies racing to develop COVID-19 therapies, an analysis of S&P Global Market Intelligence data shows.

Sorrento Therapeutics Inc. CEO Henry Ji topped the list with more than $163.8 million in total adjusted compensation. The vast majority of this took the form of options, reflecting a performance-based option model that Equilar research analyst Erin Lehr compared in a September 2020 report to the compensation deal of Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk.

Shares for San Diego-based Sorrento — which has COVID-19 diagnostics, therapies and a vaccine in various stages of development, although none have yet received approval — saw its shares rise over 100% in 2020. In November of that year, the company's gene therapy unit, SmartPharm Therapeutics Inc., secured initial funding of up to $34 million from the U.S. government to develop a COVID-19 antibody.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. CEO and founder Leonard Schleifer rose from sixth place in 2019 to No. 2 for 2020, with the CEO's compensation increasing 530.9% year over year to $135.4 million, the vast majority in stock granted. The company's shares rose 28% over the year, despite larger gains when its antibody cocktail for COVID-19 received emergency use authorization in November 2020.

Schleifer's compensation plan is tied to Regeneron's share price, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing from January.

Vaccine success does not ensure top spot

Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky, who will step down at the beginning of 2022, experienced an 18% year-over-year compensation increase to $23.1 million for 2020, a year in which the pharmaceutical giant developed a COVID-19 vaccine and was ordered by an appeals court to pay $2.12 billion related to the asbestos content of its talc baby powder.

Neither Pfizer Inc. nor Moderna Inc., whose CEOs both oversaw their own COVID-19 shots receive emergency authorization in 2020, featured on the list. In contrast, Novavax Inc., whose late-stage COVID-19 vaccine candidate has yet to receive authorization, ranked fourth, with CEO Stanley Erck's compensation rising 1,872% year over year to $48.1 million, almost entirely in options granted.

Royalty Pharma PLC CEO Pablo Legorreta, who earned $55.7 million, was the only executive on the list who received all of their compensation as cash rather than stock or options. The New York-based company, which acquires biopharmaceutical royalties and funds clinical developments in the industry, went public in a $2.01 billion IPO in June 2020 and saw its shares rise 12.5% by the year's end.

Merck & Co. Inc.'s Kenneth Frazier, who ranked fifteenth on the list, was the only CEO to see their overall compensation drop from 2019 levels. Frazier's upcoming departure was announced in February, a month after the Keytruda manufacturer revealed it had halted development of its two COVID-19 vaccine candidates due to a poor immune response.

An analysis of Market Intelligence data also revealed that the 20 largest U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical CEOs were paid an average of 153 times more than the median pay of their employees in 2020, an incremental rise on the 151-1 average ratio for the previous year.

However, the 933-1 ratio between the pay of Regeneron's Schleifer and the company's employees was almost three times larger than the 334-1 compensation ratio of J&J's Gorsky when the CEO held the top spot in 2019.

At the low end of the pay ratio scale was Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. CEO Reshma Kewalramani, who took home 43 times the median salary at the cystic fibrosis drug manufacturer.