Benzinga | Aug 5, 2021 03:09PM EDT

Elon Musk Is Highest Paid CEO For Third Year In A Row: Here Are The Top 10

Elon Musk, who is credited with founding and running Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), the leader in the global electric vehicle market, takes the top honors in corporate America's executive compensation.

Musk On Top: Musk was the highest-paid executive in 2020, and his compensation package was way above the second-placed executive, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index compiled by the media company, based on regulatory filings.

Musk was paid $6.7 billion, all in option awards, in 2020, according to Bloomberg. This is a strong jump from the $595.27 million the CEO received in 2019.

The Tesla CEO has led the pack for three years in running. In 2017, Snap, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNAP) founder Evan Spiegel received the highest compensation, amounting to $504.46 million. Musk was placed in the fourth position that year.

Musk was awarded options on Tesla's stock in 2018, which will be unlocked in 12 steps. The total package could be worth as much as $55.8 billion to the CEO, according to Tesla's filing regarding the compensation plan.

See also: How to Invest in Tesla Stock

Thus far, options awards have netted Musk a paper profit of about $33 billion, the Bloomberg report said.

Related Link: Tesla's FSD Could Alone Be Worth Much More Than The EV Giant's Current Market Cap In a Decade: Analyst

Next in Line ...

Here are the other executives that make up the top 10 in the list and their compensations:

Oak Street Health, Inc. (NYSE:OSH) CEO Mike Pykosz $568.44 million

GoodRx Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:GDRX) co-CEO Trevor Bezdek $497.84 billion

GoodRx's co-CEO Douglas Hirsch $497.84 million

Opendoor Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:OPEN) CEO Eric Wu $388.71 million

Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE:PLTR) CEO Alex Karp $369.53 million

Oak Street Health COO Geoffrey Price $356.27 million

Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook $265.04 million

Oak Street Health CMO Griffin Myers $221.35 million.

Paycom Software, Inc. (NYSE:PAYC) CEO Chad Richison: $220 million.

Executive-Employee Pay Gap Widens: The median ratio between pay for S&P 500 companies' executives and their typical employees continued to widen for the third year, the report said. The ratio increased to 182 in 2020, with some companies having ratios running in the thousands, it added.

Related Link: Tesla Analyst Cuts Price Target By 17% On Potential Battery Delay

Photo: Daniel Oberhaus (2018) via Flickr