Shankh Mitra Second-Highest Paid CEO

Shankh Mitra, the Indian-origin CEO of Welltower, has been ranked as the world's second-highest paid CEO in 2025, with a compensation package valued at $821 million. This places him behind only Elon Musk of Tesla, Inc.. The Wall Street Journal's report, 'Top-Paid CEOs Smash the $200 Million Payday', highlighted a sharp rebound in executive compensation, with more CEOs earning over $100 million than in any year since 2021. Nearly 99% of Shankh Mitra's compensation came from stock awards, including a $789 million grant in October, which is linked to Welltower's long-term performance, requiring him to remain with the company and for Welltower to increase its market value by 45% and outperform several stock market indices over five years. Shankh Mitra's career journey began in India, with an engineering degree from Jadavpur University, followed by an MBA from Columbia Business School in the United States. He worked at PwC, Fidelity Investments, Citadel, and Millennium Management before joining Welltower in 2016 and becoming CEO in 2020. The report also noted that Welltower had four executives receive nine-figure pay packages in a single year. Other highly-paid CEOs mentioned include George Kurtz of CrowdStrike, Hock Tan of Broadcom, David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Inc., David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, and Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks, another Indian-origin executive.