Indian-origin executive Shankh Mitra has achieved a historic milestone by securing the world's second-highest paid CEO position among S&P 500 companies with a compensation package worth $821 million (approximately ₹7,061 crore). According to The Wall Street Journal's annual ranking, Mitra ranked only behind Tesla chief Elon Musk, whose reported compensation package stood at $158.4 billion. The record-breaking compensation represents one of the largest awarded to a chief executive of a public company over the past decade, with executive compensation seeing a strong rebound in 2025. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, more chief executives earned packages worth over $100 million than in any year since 2021, with Mitra standing out among this elite group.
The compensation package is primarily performance-linked rather than cash-based, with nearly 99% of the total package coming through stock grants. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the package includes an equity award worth $789 million that was granted in October, with the underlying shares valued at just over $1 billion by year-end. The stock award comes with significant long-term conditions, with about half of the shares scheduled to vest in 2031 provided Mitra continues with the company. The remaining shares depend on Welltower increasing its market value by 45% while outperforming multiple stock market indices over a five-year period. The value of the underlying stock awards has already crossed $1 billion, subject to these long-term performance conditions.
Born and raised in India, Mitra completed a Bachelor of Engineering in Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering from Jadavpur University before moving to the United States for higher education, earning an MBA in Applied Value Investing from Columbia Business School. According to The Wall Street Journal, he began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers before moving into investment management, holding senior investment roles at Fidelity Investments, Citadel Investment Group and Millennium Management, where he worked as a portfolio manager focused on real estate securities. At Millennium Management, he led a team of investment professionals responsible for bottom-up underwriting of commercial real estate companies and portfolios, security selection, quantitative portfolio management and risk management. He joined Welltower in 2016 as Senior Vice President of Finance and Investments, rising through the ranks as Head of Investments, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Investment Officer before being appointed Chief Executive Officer in October 2020.
Another Indian-origin executive featured prominently in the rankings was Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who secured the eighth spot with total compensation of $100 million. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Arora earned a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University before completing advanced degrees in the United States, including an M.S. in Business Administration from Northeastern University and an M.S. in Finance from Boston College. The ranking also included notable executives such as George Kurtz of CrowdStrike Holdings, Hock Tan of Broadcom, David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs among the world's highest-paid CEOs. The report noted that Figma CEO Dylan Field's compensation package of $864 million was not included in the rankings because the company is not part of the S&P 500.
