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UMass President Jack Wilson on Entrepreneurship
Life sciences and technology companies are again raising their top executives’ salaries, after a period of near stagnation – but the raises still fall short of historic year-over-year gains.
The study, conducted by Boston-based executive search firm J. Robert Scott, Ernst & Young LLP and Harvard Business School, found that C-level executives at private technology companies got a 3.3 percent year-over-year salary bump in 2010, while comparable executives at private life sciences firms experienced an average increase of 4.2 percent in base salary over 2009.
Last year was a tough one. In addition to flat salaries, tech and life sciences executives in the study received only 56 percent of their target bonus in 2009, with non-founder CEOs specifically receiving an average of $53,000, down from $61,000 in 2008. This represents a 15 percent decrease of total bonus attainment year over year.
Life sciences execs fared better on this metric too; they received 67 percent of their 2009 target bonus, up from just 44 percent in 2008.
The 11th annual Compensation and Entrepreneurship study also revealed that the average 2010 base salary for non-founder CEOs at 560 emerging, private technology firms surveyed was $235,000, compared to $230,000 in 2009. Among the nearly 200 emerging, private life sciences firms surveyed, non-founder CEOs earned an average base salary of $277,000, up four percent from 2009.
“While salaries did increase for executives at both technology and life sciences firms in 2010, average increases are lower year over year than we have historically found. In fact, the average annual increase in salary over the past 10 years has been five percent,” said Aaron Lapat, managing director at J. Robert Scot, in a statement.
More than 750 privately-held, emerging technology and life sciences companies throughout the United States took part in the survey, most of which have fewer than 75 employees.
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