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Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos totted up a healthy $13.6 million in the usual mix of pay, shares and other compensation last year, but he'll likely need some big R&D deals and wins to boost the company's outlook—and lift his pay for 2018.
Long-standing Biogen CEO George Scangos left to run biotech startup Vir Biotechnology at the start of last year, to be replaced by the “underwhelming” (in the words of Bernstein analyst Ronny Gal) Vounatsos, its chief commercial officer since April 2016. He'd moved to Biogen at that point after a two-decade career at Merck & Co.
Vounatsos' base salary was $1.08 million, beefed up with $9.86 million in equity awards and around $2.5 million in incentive compensation, according to Biogen’s proxy filing. His much meatier $13.6 million total as CEO—he made $5.8 million as chief commercial officer—was a few million down from the $16.9 million Scangos raked in for 2015, when he was rewarded for R&D and the multiple sclerosis (MS) franchise's...