Abbott EVP and Medical Devices Group President Lisa Earnhardt [Photo courtesy of Abbott]
Abbott’s 12% device sales growth in 2024 nearly closed the $2.7 billion gap between it and GE HealthCare on our 2024 Medtech Big 100 ranking by revenue, which was based on 2023 revenue.
Under Earnhardt’s leadership, Abbott’s medical device sales grew from $17 billion in 2023 to $19.29 billion in 2024, while GE HeathCare grew only 1% year-over-year to $19.7 billion for 2024.
Previously: Design for access, says Abbott’s Lisa Earnhardt, medtech’s most powerful woman
Recruiting and retaining top talent — both at the executive and engineering level — is crucial in the medtech industry, but employee compensation is kept secret in most cases. Medical Design & Outsourcing tracks and analyzes these pay figures when disclosed by major device developers and manufacturers.
Abbott executive pay
Abbott Chair and CEO Robert Ford [Photo courtesy of Abbott]
Ford’s 2024 pay package included a $1.5 million salary, $8.2 million in stock awards, $8.2 million in option awards, a $2.9 million bonus and a $1.3 million change in pension value and non-qualified deferred compensation earnings.
Ford also received $618,998 in other compensation, including $536,731 for earnings on non-qualified defined contribution plans, $75,000 for employer contributions to defined contribution plans and 7,267 for non-business use of corporate aircraft.
Abbott’s second-highest-paid executive was former Finance EVP Robert Funck Jr., who retired in July 2024. His $8.3 million pay package decreased 8% from the year before.
Abbott paid CFO and Finance EVP Philip Boudreau $8.2 million in 2024, up 148% the year before. Boudreau succeeded Funck when he retired.
Abbott EVP, General Counsel and Secretary Hubert Allen made $8 million in 2024, up 8% from the year before.
Earnhardt’s $6.6 million pay package included $879,269 in salary, $2 million in stock awards, $2 million in option awards, a $1.2 million bonus and a $266,598 change in pension value and non-qualified deferred compensation earnings.
Abbott increased Earnhardt’s annual salary to $900,000 in March 2024. She previously got a raise to $790,000 in December 2023 for her promotion to EVP and medical devices group president (before that, she held the title of medical devices EVP).
Related: Abbott’s device group had a supply chain ‘mind shift,’ Lisa Earnhardt says
Abbott paid EVP and Established Pharmaceuticals and Nutritional Products Group President Daniel Salvadori a total of $5.8 million in 2024, down 2% from the year before.
“Our compensation program is market-based and produces outcomes that directly link to both company and officer performance,” Abbott said in the disclosure. “The vast majority of compensation for our executive officers is performance-based and objectively determined.”
Abbott’s median worker pay and CEO pay ratio
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires publicly traded companies to calculate the gap between CEO compensation and pay for its median employee.
Abbott estimated its median employee wage at $128,746, down nearly 3% from $132,152 the year before.
That latest median wage and Ford’s $24.3 million pay package puts Abbott’s CEO pay at 177 times more than the median worker, compared to a 176:1 ratio the year before.
Abbott said it had 114,092 employees as of October 2024, with global employment down about 1% from 115,184 one year before.
But the SEC gives companies some leeway in determining their median wage, and Abbott excluded 4,929 employees from its most recent calculations because they live “in locations where the cost of living, cost of labor, or currency movement against the U.S. dollar was not representative of our global employee compensation arrangements.”
Those excluded employees were in Algeria, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Tunisia. The year before, Abbott excluded 1,542 employees in Bolivia, Latvia, and the Philippines.
The share of U.S. workers in Abbott’s global workforce held steady year-over-year at 32%.
Abbott did not identify the median employee by job title or location. At other medtech companies that offer more details about their median workers than required by the SEC pay disclosure rules, those median medtech workers often hold technical roles such as device design or engineering.
Abbott investors will cast advisory “say-on-pay” votes on the company’s executive compensation practices at the April 25 annual meeting.
More medtech compensation analysis for CEOs, top-paid executives and median workers
- GE HealthCare executive compensation plunges after one-time spinoff awards
- Zimmer Biomet discloses pay packages for top executives and its median employee
- Baxter CEO pay surged before his departure — along with the median employee’s wage
- Stryker increases pay for top execs, reports slightly lower wage for median employee
- Solventum paid CEO Bryan Hanson $40M in spinoff’s first year
- Intuitive Surgical discloses pay for execs and median workers while urging votes against shareholder proposals
- Boston Scientific CEO pay breaks $20 million for the first time since Ray Elliott
- Johnson & Johnson discloses executive pay and new security measures
- Cardinal Health CEO pay climbs to $25M; Median worker pay dropped
- Medtronic CEO pay jumps 30%, employment and median worker pay drop
- No bonuses for Penumbra execs despite growing sales 25% to $1B
- Integer discloses executive pay, including separation payments for ex-EVPs
- Outset Medical investors target executive pay after recalls and warning letter
- Pay drops for Medtronic CEO and the median employee; bonus plan changes
- BD limits executive severance after ‘golden parachute’ shareholder proposal overcomes board opposition
- Zimmer Biomet changes executive pay plans after shareholder vote
