Compensation for a company's board of directors is often overlooked due to a lack of mandated checks and balances, and several healthcare industry giants have significantly higher annual director retainers than their peers, according to a recent report published by Equilar.
Although Equilar noted director compensation is considerably more complex than base retainers, the authors compared retainer pay for nonexecutive directors across companies since it is the most common feature among all company policies.
The report examined 10 companies with the highest annual director retainers. Four healthcare companies were included in this group of 10. Equilar then compared the retainer against the median retainer in place at each company's respective peer group. Companies identified their own peers for purposes of this analysis.
Here are the four healthcare companies in Equilar's report, ranked according to each company's annual director retainer and the median annual director retainer of the company's peers.
1. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals — $2,074,085 ($360,000 for peers)
2. Celgene Corp. — $524,871 ($317,500 for peers)
3. Valeant Pharmaceuticals International — $475,000 ($335,000 for peers)
4. Allergan PLC — $450,000 ($280,000 for peers)