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Which Charlotte-area public companies pay their CEO — and typical employee — the most

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Four of Charlotte’s largest public companies report that the annual pay for its median employee, other than the CEO, is more than $100,000.

The Charlotte Business Journal reviewed the proxy filings for the region’s 24 largest public companies, ranked by market capitalization, to see which CEO earned the most last year, which had the highest median employee pay and which saw the greatest disparity between the CEO’s annual compensation and that of the median employee.

When it came to highest median employee pay, Brighthouse Financial Inc. led the group with compensation for the median employee pegged at $150,678. That may be unsurprising. Financial companies hold three of the top six spots for median pay in the region. And Brighthouse is the smallest company, when ranked by employees, on the list at just over 1,300 workers.

Brighthouse also had the region’s second-best ratio for compensation of its top executive when compared with the median employee. CEO Eric Steigerwalt’s $8.5 million total compensation package was just 56 times the median employee’s compensation.

The company with the highest-paid CEO — Bank of America Corp.’s (NYSE: BAC) Brian Moynihan had a $26 million package in 2019 — had median pay for an employee in 2019 at $84,256. But despite that relatively high median, Moynihan’s compensation was 276 times that amount — enough to give Moynihan the fifth-highest ratio between his compensation and the median employee.

Check out the complete analysis here for more on the pay offered to CEOs and employees at local public companies.