In 2012, Jeff Weiner the CEO at LinkedIn Corp earned $1.18 million. However, his total compensation increased over 40-fold in 2013 to more than $49.1 million after the business gave its first stock awards out since 2011.
Weiner’s pay included stock options worth $28.7 million and equity awards worth $18.7 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in the U.S. Other high-level executives in the company, based in Mountain View, California also were given paydays of multimillion dollars in 2013, said the regulatory filing.
LinkedIn, similar to many technology companies in Silicon Valley, has given option and stock awards every second year since becoming a public company in 2011.
LinkedIn will report its earnings for the first quarter on May 1.
One research company on the Internet said LinkedIn was taking the success of the company into consideration and viewing it as an award for the long-term, something the will be cover many years of equity.
The firm said that in the technology industry there have been many large equity awards in the past several years.
This year shares at LinkedIn have slumped amidst a selloff in stock that are social media, as investors are debating whether these companies will be able to grow at the same rate as they have during the past.
LinkedIn shares were off by 6.4% on Monday to close at $148.06 and are off by 32% in 2014.
Compensation to Weiner exceeds those of a number of his peers in social media. Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, Inc earned $130,250 during 2013, the year the microblogging business based in San Francisco completed its IPO.
Facebook Inc’s Mark Zuckerberg earned a total of $653,165 in compensation including a base salary of just $1 and including his passenger fees, crew, catering and fuel costs for the private plane he used for any personal reasons as part of his security regime.
