There’s a new highest-paid finance chief in the US business world. Last year, Elon Musk’s Tesla clinched a stellar milestone by rewriting the compensation playbook and awarding the electric carmaker’s Indian-origin CFO, Vaibhav Taneja, a pay package of $139 million in 2024.
According to Equilar, a leading source for corporate leadership data, his paycheck not only surpassed most chief executives but was also greater than the highest amount paid to a chief financial officer since modern reporting began two decades ago. The record payout remained unbeaten till 2025 when Tim McHugh, co-president and CFO of real-estate investment trust Welltower, upended that achievement, setting a rare new record, as per The Wall Street Journal.
McHugh’s $167 million pay package in 2025 surpassed the compensation earned by his CFO peers and soared far beyond what many CEOs made last year.
Not only has he outpaced Vaibhav Taneja’s Tesla package from 2024, but the Welltower CFO now sits in a rare group of top executives making $100 million or more, according to WSJ’s analysis of MyLogIQ data.
A surprising fact many may miss is that another Indian-origin executive actually made more than McHugh earned in 2025. However, they are excluded from the highest-paid CFO scoreboard because their company isn’t in the S&P 500. This person is one of only three CFOs who made it into the $100 million-plus club in 2025. Manmeet Soni of biopharmaceutical company Summit Therapeutics made more than $249.13 million in 2025, according to MyLogIQ, which provides critical data and analytics for and about US public companies.
The data further revealed that Soni’s 2025 compensation ranked atop a list of CFOs (in and outside the S&P 500) earning at least $100 million in a year during the 2021-25 window.
Next in line are Welltower’s Tim McHugh with his $166.96 million pay in 2025, PetroGas’ Huang Yu with his $140 million pay in 2021, Tesla’s Vaibhav Taneja with $139.47 million total yearly compensation in 2024, Oracle’s Safra Catz with $138.19 million in 2021, Fermi’s Miles Everson with $134.18 million in 2025 and CloudWeb’s Zhi De Liao with $104.25 million in 2021.
Highest-paid CFOs in 2025 (S&P 500)
Here’s what the compensation tally for top-paid CFOs in the S&P 500 for 2025 looks like:
Welltower’s Tim McHugh: $163.75 million equity + $2.45 million bonus + $0.7 million salary
Alphabet’s Anat Ashkenazi: $30.17 million +$1 million
Blackstone’s Michael Chae: $20.84 million equity + $8.09 million other
Broadcom’s Kirsten Spears: $27.14 million equity
Palantir Technologies’ David Glazer: $27.48 million equity
Philip Morris International’s Emmanuel Babeau: $1.52 million salary + $2.51 million bonus + $5.46 million equity + $17.41 million other
Goldman Sachs’ Denis Coleman: $1.85 million salary +$9.33 million bonus + $14.73 million equity
Palo Alto Networks’ Dipak Golechha: $0.72 million + $24.2 million equity
Highest paid CFOs in 2024 & 2025: Vaibhav Taneja vs Tim McHugh
Currently based in Texas, according to LinkedIn, Vaibhav Taneja has been working at Elon Musk’s Tesla for nearly a decade. Joining the company as an assistant corporate controller in 2017, the Indian-origin executive has switched between multiple financial roles over the years until finally landing the top seat of the chief financial officer’s role in 2023.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s analysis of his $139.5 million pay package, Taneja’s compensation included stock options and equity awards he received in October 2024, triggered by his promotion to CFO in August 2023. Taneja was thriving financially while his own boss, Elon Musk, was embroiled in legal tussles and continued working without a paycheck.
Meanwhile, Welltower’s Tim McHugh has been a co-president and CFO since January 2025. He originally joined the company as a senior vice president – treasurer in 2016. Before McHugh’s pay soared to $167 million in 2025, he was making $7.2 million in 2024. His more than $100 million jump in pay was majorly fuelled by stock awards valued at about $164 million.
As the highest-paid CFO in the S&P 500 in 2025, McHugh’s nearest peers (Alphabet’s Anat Ashkenazi) in the list of top pay packages sit below him with a gap of over $100 million, according to MyLogIQ data.
On the flip side, in 2024, Axon’s CFO, Brittany Bagley, trailed Tesla’s Vaibhav Taneja, securing a $53.4 million pay package, according to AI-native finance operating system Datarails’ analysis of 10,024 SEC proxy filings.