As more drugmakers tally up their CEO compensation for 2025, yet another Big Pharma chief has collected above the $30 million threshold.
Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato has been awarded nearly $32.8 million in 2025 pay, marking a significant leap over the $24.3 million package he obtained for 2024. Duato took the helm as J&J’s CEO at the beginning of 2022.
Going by the numbers, Duato collected a salary of $1.6 million—the same rate he pocketed for 2024—plus nearly $21 million in stock and option awards. Non-equity incentive pay worked out to about $4.3 million for the period.
Duato racked up some $600,000 in the “other compensation” category. While that group for some companies includes travel, security and other expenses, J&J specified in its pay report that it logs those costs separately and does not factor them into executive pay.
Meanwhile, a change in the calculation of Duato’s pension value and deferred compensation earnings caused that category of the CEO’s pay to hit $5.3 million for the 2025 period.
Justifying Duato’s payout, which came in some 30% above his 2024 compensation, J&J’s board argued that the company exceeded its strategic and financial goals for 2025, triggering an annual performance bonus for the CEO at 118.3% of target and long-term incentives at 145% of target.
The board also credited Duato with helping J&J navigate its major loss of exclusivity on autoimmune med Stelara and praised the chief executive’s business development maneuvers and stewardship over the pipeline in 2025.
Duato has high hopes for his company’s future, with J&J earlier this year forecasting 2026 sales between $100 billion and $101 billion and telegraphing the potential for double-digit revenue increases by the end of the decade.
Those lofty ambitions follow a 2025 Duato described on a recent earnings call as a “catapult year” for the company, during which J&J charted a 6% sales increase to $94.2 billion for the 12-month period.
With Stelara now facing biosimilar competition, J&J’s main cash cow these days is its multiple myeloma treatment Darzalex, which delivered (PDF) nearly $14.4 billion in 2025 sales, a significant 23% jump over the amount it generated in 2024.
Meanwhile, other J&J meds like Tremfya, Spravato and the CAR-T Carvykti are continuing to grow sales beyond the billion-dollar threshold.
“We are different from other companies,” Duato told analysts during his company’s earnings presentation in January. “We are not focused on one or two growth drivers.”
Duato’s compensation puts him in the running with multiple other Big Pharma chiefs who’ve pulled down payouts above $30 million for 2025.
AbbVie’s Robert Michael, who took over in 2024, received a major 75% pay boost to $32.5 million for his work last year, immediately propelling him toward the upper echelons of CEO compensation.
And, while European pharma chiefs typically receive less than their American peers, Switzerland’s Novartis announced earlier this year that it was awarding its helmsman, Vas Narasimhan, 24.9 million Swiss francs, or roughly $32.4 million in realized pay. Narasimhan benefited from a long-term incentive tied to a three-year cycle.
For now—and rather unsurprisingly—Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks sits at the top of the 2025 pay rankings with a haul of $36.7 million.
That award is due in no small part to the stellar performance of Lilly’s GIP/GLP-1 meds for diabetes and obesity, Mounjaro and Zepbound, with Lilly noting in its pay breakdown that the company has enjoyed revenue growth of approximately 207% since the start of Ricks’ tenure in 2017.