Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, Ph.D., has yet to top the $33 million in compensation that he earned on the coattails of megablockbuster COVID-19 sales in 2022, but a $27.6 million pay package after a busy 2025 isn’t too shabby.
Bourla’s 2025 rewards are his second-largest since he took the helm at Pfizer in 2019, topping last year’s increase to $24.6 million. The CEO was credited with driving the Big Pharma firm to “solid financial results,” setting the company up for “strong growth” toward the end of the decade, Pfizer explained in its proxy report (PDF).
Beyond its 2025 revenue of $62.5 billion, which was down 2% from 2024, Pfizer had a busy year highlighted by a landmark drug pricing agreement with the Trump administration and a GLP-1 bidding war that saw the company snatch up obesity biotech Metsera for $10 billion, away from the grasp of rival bidder Novo Nordisk.
“This strategic milestone represents more than a transaction—it’s a deliberate investment in the future of medicine,” Bourla said of the Metsera deal at the time.
The drug pricing deal, meanwhile, made Pfizer the first to agree to lower its Medicaid prices to Trump’s “most favored nation” pricing and offer its products on the government’s TrumpRx direct-to-consumer platform, in exchange for a three-year grace period from the administration’s pharmaceutical import tariffs.
Both of these moves—along with spearheading the company’s sweeping cost-savings program that should save $5.7 billion through 2026—were laid out to help explain Bourla’s 2025 compensation bump.
The CEO earned the same $1.8 million salary that he got in 2024, plus $9.4 million in stock awards and $9 million in options. A small change in pension value and $1.9 million in “all other compensation” join a $5.4 million annual incentive award to make up the executive’s total pay package.
Ninety-two percent of Bourla’s compensation is performance-based, the company said. The drugmaker’s compensation committee determined that Bourla had done an “outstanding job leading the company to strong operational results,” justifying his $5.4 million bonus.
The $1.9 million included in Bourla’s “all other compensation” category marked a notable increase from 2024’s less than $1 million and includes a sizeable $610,650 for security fees. This was due to “additional security protection” awarded to certain executives based on “heightened security risks, including threats made against our executives,” Pfizer explained.
Bourla joined Pfizer in 1993 and was named Pfizer’s board chairman in 2020 following his 2019 CEO appointment. After a late 2025 review of the company’s leadership structure, its governance committee agreed that it would be “in the best interest of the company and its shareholders” for Bourla to continue serving as board chairman in 2026, citing his “deep scientific, industry and regulatory expertise, along with his extensive company knowledge.”
Elsewhere on Pfizer’s leadership team, chief scientific officer Chris Boshoff, M.D., Ph.D., was awarded $10 million in 2025 compensation, while chief financial officer Dave Denton earned $9.7 million, chief legal officer Doug Lanker was compensated $9.1 million and chief commercial officer Aamir Malik received $9.4 million. Each executive earned a pay bump from their respective 2024 compensation.
Bourla’s pay package falls below the $30 million threshold that several of his peers can tout in 2025 pay, with Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato earning some $32.8 million and AbbVie’s Robert Michael collecting $32.5 million. So far, Eli Lilly’s David Ricks is holding the title of the highest-paid pharma CEO in 2025 with a $36.7 million pay package.
