For GSK CEO Emma Walmsley, there was good news and bad news in the company’s annual report.
While it revealed (PDF) that Walmsley took a 16% pay cut in 2024, it also laid out a new compensation plan which could make her one of the highest-paid chief executives in the industry this year.
With compensation tied more closely to the market performance of the company, Walmsley’s 2025 pay could max out at 21.56 million pounds sterling ($27.1 million) if GSK’s shares were to achieve a 50% increase.
That would be a massive bump in pay for Walmsley, whose 2024 package came to 10.6 million pounds ($13.4 million), which was down from 12.7 million pounds ($16 million) in 2023.
Walmsley, 55, has been the high-profile CEO of the British drugmaker since 2017. While her compensation has typically fallen short of that received by her counterparts at similar-sized companies in the U.S., it usually measures up to other biopharma CEOs in Europe.
For example, earlier this month, Roche revealed that its CEO Thomas Schinecker was paid 10 million Swiss francs ($11.1 million) last year. Meanwhile, in 2023, Walmsley’s compensation topped the packages paid to Sanofi’s Paul Hudson ($11.4 million) and Novo Nordisk’s Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen ($9.9 million).
But some European companies have begun to adjust their pay strategy. For example, AstraZeneca paid CEO Pascal Soriot 14.7 million pounds ($18.5 million) last year, and Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan received 14.2 million Swiss francs ($15.7 million) in 2024.
As for GSK, which creates new compensation plans every three years, it said in the annual report that Walmsley’s current package was in the “lower quartile” of the companies that make up GSK’s peer group and that her compensation was “insufficient either to reward her performance or to provide appropriate capacity for succession.”
Walmsley received high marks for her showing in 2024, but the company explained that her compensation was reduced because of an overall reduction in bonus packages.
“Emma led the executive team and the wider organisation to deliver continued, improved operating performance in 2024, with GSK’s reshaped product portfolio demonstrating both strength and resilience, notably with an increased contribution from Specialty Medicines,” GSK wrote.
Helping guide the company to an appropriate compensation strategy was an adjustment to its peer group of companies, necessitated by GSK’s divestment of consumer health unit Haleon, which leaves it now as a “biopharma company” as opposed to a “generalist company,” the report said.
Among the companies now in its peer group are Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Gilead, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche and Sanofi.