For IQVIA CEO, a $225K payday — every day
After a key investor drew the line last year on executive compensation at a Danbury company at the heart of the COVID-19 response, the CEO reaped another $84 million via shares awarded in previous years on top of his regular pay.
In four years through 2020, IQVIA CEO Ari Bousbib has pocketed $292 million in stock compensation alone — as stock paid him by the company has hit “vesting” dates allowing him to cash out shares.
That total does not include salary, cash incentives, and benefits that push his total take-home pay to $328 million over that four-year stretch — amounting to nearly $225,000 a day.
Bousbib has led IQVIA since the company was formed in October 2016 in the merger of IMS Health, a Danbury company he led providing drug pricing data to the pharmaceutical industry among other services, and Quintiles, a manager of clinical trials based in Charlotte, N.C. The company lists tandem headquarters offices today in Danbury and Charlotte.
Bousbib was hired as IMS CEO in 2010, after 14 years with United Technologies and its Otis Elevator, Carrier air conditioning, and UTC building systems divisions.
“When joining the company that year, he was awarded a number of IMS stock options [and] prior to 2016, those options had not been exercised and Ari had not sold any of his company holdings,” stated IQVIA spokesperson Tor Constantino, in an email response to a query on Bousbib’s compensation. “The options that were awarded in 2010 were due to expire in 2020. It was therefore prudent for him, prior to the expiration date, to exercise those same options over a period of time rather than waiting until the expiration.”
That has landed Bousbib the past few years in an executive compensation watchdog report published by As You Sow, a nonprofit organization that updated its annual “most overpaid” list last week for 2019 paydays among Fortune 500 CEOs. Bousbib’s $16.5 million in estimated compensation that year placed him among the top 100 nationally, and fourth among those leading Connecticut-based companies after the CEOs of Xerox, Booking Holdings, and Cigna. The year before, it was Bousbib who led all Connecticut CEOs on the list, ranked 20th overall.
Just 11 percent of IQVIA shareholders used their nonbinding “say on pay” vote to protest executive compensation at last year’s annual meeting, with the company reporting Bousbib’s 2020 pay at $25 million including its estimates for the future value of equity. That compared to nearly 60 percent of Xerox shareholders balking at the $23.5 million package for CEO John Visentin, the third highest bloc of dissident investors of any company in the country.
But those voting against last year’s IQVIA’s compensation included the fund giant BlackRock, which according to As You Sow votes only rarely against the most exorbitant of
executive pay packages. BlackRock called IQVIA out nevertheless, for what it deemed was a lack of transparency in reporting how its compensation committee calculated elements of executive compensation.
“Companies definitely respond,” said Rosanna Weaver, program manager of As You Sow. “Do they respond by lowering the [total pay]? Not necessarily . ... A lot of them have gotten rid of excessive perks — the feeling that the CEO is well-paid and you don’t need to give them all these other goodies.”
IQVIA shareholders will get “say on frequency” at this year’s meeting scheduled for mid-April at the Ethan Allen Hotel in Danbury within eye shot of its hillside corporate office, voting on whether to have IQVIA’s board field “say on pay” votes more often. Tenet Healthcare CEO Ronald Rittenmeyer chair’s the board’s compensation committee.
Since 2017, IQVIA’s stock has appreciated two and a half times in value, from about $77 to above $193 on Monday. While that has led to a windfall for IQVIA employees awarded stock compensation in prior years — none more so than Bousbib, who guided IQVIA to $308 million in profits last year — other investors have shared in the gains.
IQVIA stock swooned in the early weeks of the pandemic last year, as patients stayed away from clinics that were monitoring their health during trials of drugs they were taking. But as the pharmaceutical industry pivoted to coronavirus, IQVIA saw a boom helping set up more than 300 clinical trials for vaccines and treatments under development, ultimately recruiting more than 100,000 people to participate.
The company added roughly 3,000 employees last year to push its totals globally to 70,000 people, about 18,000 of them in the United States. Constantino indicated that COVID-19 trials were a major reason for hiring in both the United States and in some of the other 100 countries where IQVIA has operations.
“We expect COVID work to be with us through 2021, and maybe also into 2022 because there is a need for vaccines from multiple manufacturers to meet global demand,” Bousbib said during a February conference call. “There are new vaccines that are being developed for variants of the virus. There are alternative vaccines that are needed in case of adverse safety events or quality issues or manufacturing delays.”