The world’s top 10 highest paid CEOs

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Elon Musk cuts an enigmatic figure. The founder and CEO of Tesla made headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2018 by appearing on YouTube smoking a marijuana cigarette. He also got in hot water for alleging questionable sexual preferences by one of the Thai cave divers involved in the rescue of 12 trapped children and their soccer coach.

But there’s no doubting the guy’s business acumen. Or his pivotal role in bringing electric cars to the world through his iconic Tesla brand – that can only be a good thing for the environment and the planet.

Oh, and he’s rich. Wikipedia has clocked his net worth at US$90.8 billion (HK$704 billion).

Musk has also taken first place in a list of the world’s highest paid CEOs. In figures just published by Gigacalculator, he topped a list of highest paid bosses, earning a staggering US$15,263 (HK$118,330) every five minutes.

Head honcho at Apple, Tim Cook, took out second place (US$3429), while telco tycoon Tom Rutledge, CEO for Charter Communications, came in third at a neat US$3000 per five minutes. Scroll down for the full list.

As a fun exercise, Gigacalculator’s salary-to-hourly calculator worked out how much time it would take the average employee to make what the world’s top earners make in five minutes.

Turns out, it would take the average worker 16 weeks, one day and four hours to earn what it takes Elon Musk five minutes to make, in which time he could “buy 90 return flight tickets from New York to San Francisco”.

It would take the average worker three weeks, three days and three hours to earn what Tim Cook makes in five minutes – in which time Cook could “purchase three iPhone 12s”.

Top 10 highest paid CEOs:

Just for record, Bloomberg reported that Musk’s salary for 2019 was US$595.3 million.