General Motors CEO Mary Barra tops Detroit Three pay rankings with $29.5 million salary
- Barra's targets – and her compensation – improved since last year.
- GM CFO Paul Jacobson and President Mark Reuss made $13.1 million and $18.5 million, respectively.
Compensation for General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra spiked about 6% last year to $29.5 million due to the company reaching several performance targets and achieving record profits, the company said in its annual executive compensation report.
In the Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, GM also noted that most other corporate officers reported modest gains, excluding incoming or outgoing employees.
Compensation for Barra, 63, is broken down into these categories: $2.1 million in salary, the same since 2017, with $19.5 million in stock awards from record financial gains in the year, $6.6 million in incentive plan compensation, and the balance of $1.2 million in other payments for items such as benefits, savings plans and insurance, medical or company vehicles.
GM Compensation Committee Chair Wesley Bush said in a letter to shareholders included in the filing that he believed the company's payment program played a significant role in GM's record financial performance.
“Disciplined execution in our core internal combustion engine business while demonstrating that the strategic investments we made in electric vehicles and our software capabilities are paying off,” Bush wrote. “Investors have taken notice of our recent performance, driving our stock price up 50% in 2024, outperforming our peers.”
Don't mistake progress for winning
Barra's targets — and her compensation — improved from a year ago, putting her back in the top slot in executive compensation among the Detroit Three.
Improvements in retail market share across the company's powertrain vehicles allowed Barra's stock options to rise nearly $5 million, a main driver of her compensation improvement for 2024. Total 2023 compensation fell for Barra to $27.8 million, a 4% dip compared with the year prior after GM failed to meet shareholder value targets to which part of her compensation is tied.
Yet Bush warned shareholders that positive growth does not mean employees should rest on their laurels.
“While we’ve had a great year at General Motors, we’d like to echo something our chair and CEO, Mary Barra, often reminds her team: ‘Don’t mistake progress for winning,’ ” Bush wrote. “Your Compensation Committee recognizes there is more work to do and believes that our shareholders will benefit greatly from that work.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump's tariff threats could still meaningfully harm company profits, and, necessarily, profit-sharing. Several auto industry analysts note that a decline is likely unavoidable in annual profit-sharing checks to UAW-represented workers and bonuses that salaried people earn.
At the request of the Detroit Free Press, Patrick Anderson, CEO of East Lansing-based consultancy Anderson Economic Group, said his team spent a week doing the math and projected that the Detroit Three will see a reduction of about $5 billion in “operating profits” in North America for the rest of this year due to tariffs.
The formula for GM and Ford states that qualified employees get $1,000 per every $1 billion in annual earnings in the companies. GM's 2024 pretax profit-sharing payout for its 45,000 UAW-represented workforce was $14,500 to eligible employees, compared with the 2023 payout of $12,250.
Compensation for Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley, 62, dropped 6%, or $1.6 million, after the company failed to hit key performance objectives, most notably quality improvement targets. The company reported in March Farley's total compensation of $24.8 million was down from $26.5 million in 2023.
Meanwhile, Stellantis paid former CEO Carlos Tavares more than $24 million in total compensation last year, the company said in a February filing. His compensation fell dramatically compared with 2023's $39.5 million, when a record year allowed the executive to collect about 518 times that of the average Stellantis employee.
Yet production issues, dropping sales and conflicts with the dealer network prompted Tavares to depart in early December, though a search to replace him was already underway. The owner of the Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat brands reported a devastating 70% drop in net profit in 2024 compared with the year prior. The automaker notched a net profit of $5.8 billion for the year, but still suffered a net loss of $133 million in the second half.
Holding leaders accountable
GM's executive compensation strategy echoes that of the other automakers aiming to hold executives accountable for their own performance and the performance of the company as a whole.
Last year, GM announced that it would be changing the formula in its executive variable compensation structure to align more closely with the company's four strategic growth areas — internal combustion engine vehicles, electric vehicles, software and services and autonomous vehicles.
Failure to progress in electric vehicle production and autonomous vehicle development accounted for declines in Barra's compensation from 2022 to 2023.
GM's other top leaders, CFO Paul Jacobson and President Mark Reuss, had total compensation of $13.1 million and $18.5 million, respectively.
The report also discloses the ratio of executive compensation against the median of all General Motors employees. That ratio, which is required in the annual executive compensation report, sat at 310-to-1, an increase from 2023's 303-to-1 ratio.
The median annual total compensation of all GM employees last year, excluding Barra, rose to $95,111 from $91,778 in 2023.
As of Dec. 31, 2023, GM had 162,000 employees, with 91,417, or about half of them, located in the United States, according to its website.
Senior autos writer Jamie L. LaReau contributed to this report.
Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. Reach her at jcharniga@freepress.com.