Australia's highest-paid chief executives revealed

Australia's highest-paid executive lives in US and earns 500 times that of average full-time worker Wed 15 Jul 2026 at 4:42am In short: Australia's highest-paid executive collected almost $48 million in the 2025 financial year, which is about 500 times the full-time average wage. The average ASX100 CEO earned about 55 times more than the average wage earner in FY2025. Five out of the top 10 highest earners listed on the ASX are from US-based companies, according to Australian Council of Superannuation Investors research. American entrepreneur and Life360's co-founder Chris Hulls is Australia's highest-paid executive, collecting almost $48 million in the 2025 financial year, which is almost 500 times the full-time average wage. Mr Hulls, who lives in the United States, is now Life360's executive chairman, having led the company for almost two decades and helping it achieve record results in 2025. The company, which is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, has achieved Silicon Valley status through its popular GPS location-sharing app. But he's not the only offshore CEO to make the latest list of highest-paid CEOs of Australian publicly listed companies. US-based bosses have staked their claim to the biggest salaries in the ASX, with five out of the top 10 highest earners this year being CEOs of US-domiciled companies. It's the first time in the history of this study that 'outsiders' have taken half of the top ten spots, although US-based CEOs have always featured. The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI)'s report looks at 80 ASX100 CEOs and 68 ASX101-200 CEOs, as well as realised pay for 15 CEOs at entities that are part of the ASX200, but which are not domiciled in Australia and so do not report executive pay under Australia's disclosure framework. The report showed average realised pay for an ASX100 CEO in the 2025 financial year was $6,005,219, up from $5,732,321 the previous year. The average ASX100 CEO earned about 55 times more than the average wage earner in FY2025. ACSI bases this figure on ABS average weekly full-time earnings figure of $2,083.20. This is for full-time workers and does not include part-time workers. Mr Hull's pay was almost 500 times the average weekly full-time earnings at the time. Lauren Antonoff took over from him as Life360 CEO last year. Aside from Mr Hulls, other US-based chief executives that topped the list included ResMed CEO Mick Farrell and News Corporation CEO Robert Thomson. ACSI said new CEOs in the top 10 included companies that demonstrated big increases in value including Mr Hulls, Jon Pilcher of biotech Neuren Pharmaceuticals and Raleigh Finlayson at Genesis Mineral. ACSI says Mr Pilcher's realised pay of $21.7 million was made up almost entirely from a $20.8 million gain from the July 2025 exercise of 1.5 million in loan-funded shares granted in previous years. Highest paid Aussie-based CEO was Sigma Healthcare's Vikesh Ramsunder The highest paid Australian-based CEO in the ASX200 was Vikesh Ramsunder, CEO of Sigma Healthcare. This was his first appearance in the CEOs list and follows the company's merger with Chemist Warehouse. ACSI's report looks at "realised pay", which is calculated as reported fixed pay and cash bonus plus the value of any equity or one-off cash incentive that vested during the reporting year. This means that if a CEO takes part of their salary as an option to cash out on shares when the company's stock price rises, they can make millions. In the case of Mr Ramsunder, his realised pay of $32.62 million was driven by a gain of $25.8 million from equity incentives vesting largely because of the Sigma-Chemist Warehouse merger in February 2025. ACSI says he received proceeds from share sales shortly after the merger completed of about $34 million. A spokesman for Sigma told ABC News that in relation to Mr Ramsunder's remuneration in FY25 "this was one off and related to the sale of historical shares, off the back of one of largest mergers in Australian corporate history". How realised pay can change from year to year ACSI says its data is based on disclosures from annual reports, 'change of director interest' notices and other ASX announcements relating to new issues and movements in unquoted securities. It notes that "the realised pay methodology is not a perfect proxy for actual value received by a CEO as this can only be determined using the share price at the time the underlying shares are eventually sold". The next three highest paid Australian-based CEOs based on realised pay also came from the ASX100: Macquarie's Shemara Wikramanayake and Goodman Group's Greg Goodman and BHP's Mike Henry. They also made the FY2024 list. Ms Wikramanayake's FY25 realised pay, at $30.39 million, was up from $29.76 million in FY24. Mr Goodman's realised pay fell from around $27 million in FY24 & FY23. And Mr Henry's realised pay fell from $19.28 million in FY24 to $13.21 million. ASX CEO more likely to lose their job than their bonus This year's research again found that an ASX100 CEO is more likely to lose their job than their bonus. Ten ASX100 CEOs left their roles. By contrast, just five CEOs eligible for a bonus missed out. Aside from the 2020 financial year which was marked by the COVID pandemic, the data shows that every year for the past 11 years, ASX100 CEOs have received a median bonus of between 60 per cent and 77 per cent of maximum bonus levels. This year, only five chief executives didn't get a bonus at all. "A major concern for investors is that there is that culture of entitlement on annual bonuses," said Ed John, executive manager, Stewardship at ACSI. "Bonuses become an expectation rather than something that's paid for our performance. And that's a huge issue for investors." He said because shareholders had been holding boards to account on CEO pay over the years, ASX100 CEO fixed and cash pay levels have been kept better under check compared to previous years. With a median salary of $1.83 million, Australian CEOs are still receiving less than their colleagues in the record year of 2012, who took home a median of $1.95 million. The median total realised pay for an ASX100 CEO was $4,800,898 which was up from $4,153,555 the previous year. Fixed pay continues to rise, and CEOs get big payouts when they exit The same stagnation in CEO realised pay has not been seen in fixed pay for ASX101-200 CEOs. Median fixed pay for an ASX101-200 CEO rose 5.4 per cent in FY25 to $1.14 million. Termination payments for ASX100 CEOs cost shareholders $18.6 million in FY25, driven by more and higher payments. Nine chief executives received a payment, up from six in FY24. The increase in average payments from about $1.4 million to about $2.2 million was largely due to FY25's single large payment of $5.88 million to former Rio Tinto CEO Jakob Stausholm.