Biocurious: Lifting the lid on ASX life science sector salaries

• Hardworking ASX biotech CEOs received an average 2.1% kicker to their base pay in 2025-26 
• But that’s only part of the story, with smaller company CEOs missing out on short- and long-term incentives
• CEOs paying the price of falling share valuations, failed clinical studies and subdued investor sentiment

Biotech CEOs at the smaller end of town are paying the price of poor or indifferent performance with lighter wallets, according to a specialist study of the ASX health and biotechnology sectors.

In many cases, they are blameless but momentum is not on their companies’ side.

According to executive recruitment firm Wexford Hayes’ annual healthcare sector salary study, CEOs took home a fixed average salary of $675,000 last year, 2.1% higher.

Short- and long-term incentives (STIs and LTIs) expanded the pay packets to $1.296 million (up 3.4%).

“However, the sector average masks substantial differences between the three market capitalisation segments,” the report says.

The $1 billion-plus companies pocketed a 7.1% increase, to $2.85m.

While their fixed pay declined 2.8%, STIs and LTIs drove the increase.

CEOs of companies with a $100-999m market cap saw their total pay remain steady at $1.29m, with a “modest” rise in LTIs offsetting the fixed and STI declines.

Times are tough

Wexford Hayes founder and managing partner Lee Rochester says many biotechs operate in a discernibly tougher environment.

“It was certainly like that the previous year, but I think it’s certainly coming home to roost now,” he said.

“Many companies haven’t really been able to convert [into commercial success].”

STIs are sensitive to measures such as capital raisings, development milestones and successful regulatory lodgings.

“When you’re not a revenue-generating company, paying STIs in a tough environment can be hard to achieve.”

Minnows feel the hip-pocket pain

Spare a thought for the poor cousins in the sub-$100m market cap cohort.

For the minnows, average total CEO pay plunged 18.7% to $578,000, with STIs falling 52.7% and LTIs tumbling 42.9%.

CEOs’ fixed ‘rem’ fell 1%, to $423,000 on average.

“Incentives for small caps have fallen through the floor,” said Rochester.

Fixed pay accounted for 73% of these CEOs’ total rem, compared with 42% for the $1bn-plus companies.

“For boards and CEOs, 2025-26 illustrates how differently incentives can influence total remuneration across the sector,” Rochester said.

“They supported further growth among the largest companies but accounted for most of the decline among the smallest.”

US salaries set eye-raising benchmarks

The Wexford Hayes report is not based on salary surveys, but the publicly available information in annual reports.

This reduces the risk of incorrect or incomplete data being included in the exercise and is more like the ‘cup of truth’.

The firm drew the info from 64 annual reports: 13 large cap, 22 mid cap and 29 from the land of minnows.

A key caveat is the report only included CEOs paid in Aussie dollars. This excluded a growing cohort of CEOs paid in US dollars and a handful paid in the Kiwi currency.

The salaries of US-domiciled CEOs are famously – or notoriously – higher than those of their Australian counterparts.

Take Botanix Pharmaceuticals (ASX:BOT), which has struggled share price-wise despite getting an approved anti-sweating drug onto the US market.

In 2025-26, chairman Vince Ippolito received total remuneration of $2.03m, including $1.02m in performance rights.

CEO Dr Howie McKibbon pocketed $1.98m, including $1.06m in non-cash rights. The four non-executive directors received between $305,000 and $321,000.

Dr McKibbon recently acknowledged the “incongruent” pay levels in the US were always a challenge for an ASX-listed company.

Rem packages whipsaw over time

This year’s study is the 11th for Wexford Hayes, which used its inaugural 2015 exercise as the benchmark.

Rochester said he had been consistent with his methodology over the years.

“STIs, for example, are what’s reported and vested in the annual report and not what the company issued that year.”

While the trends can whipsaw, in eight of the years the CEOs received a fixed pay bump, ranging from 0.6% in 2023-24 to 18.45% in 2022-23.

In 2016-17 and 2021-22 remuneration fell, by 3.6% and 7.3% respectively.

STIs in 2020-21 jumped a whopping 223%, but off the back of the 2019-20 decrease of 60%.

LTIs rose 29.5% in 2020-21, but fell 48.8% in 2017-18.

The sharp drop in STIs and LTIs in 2017-18 is partly attributable to the July 2017 retirement of Ramsay Health Care (ASX:RHC) CEO Chris Rex, who earned $22m in the 2016-17 year ($2.37m of which was a base salary).

Rochester said other factors accounted for the variations.

These include a large number of sub-$100m market cap companies that used to be worth much more.

As they tumbled in value, CEO salaries did not decline concomitantly. This is not necessarily unjust, given running a struggling company can take as much effort – if not more – as running a successful one.

Conversely, 4D Medical (ASX:4DX) has graduated from being a plodder to a serious $2.4bn player in lung imaging.

Founders’ pay surprises

Founder CEO salaries always make for an interesting read – one way or the other.

Before the company came to grief with its knee osteoarthritis trial, Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals (ASX:PAR) chairman and CEO Paul Rennie received a base salary of $1.01m and a $138,500 cash bonus.

On the back of Mesoblast’s (ASX:MSB) successful commercialisation of its stem cell treatment Ryoncil, founder and CEO Dr Silviu Itescu received $6.43m – $1.348m in base pay and $1.659m as a cash bonus. Overall, 78% of his total rem was performance-linked.

4D Medical founder and CEO Dr Andreas Fouras earned a base $718,240. But with LTIs his total rem burgeoned to $2.89m, reflecting the company’s spectacular share run during the period.

ProMedicus (ASX:PME) co-founder and CEO Dr Sam Hupert took home $1.066m, most of it in base pay.

Telix Pharmaceuticals (ASX:TLX) co-founder and CEO Dr Chris Behrenbruch received an $827,060 base salary in calendar 2025.

Hupert owns 23% of the $18bn market cap Pro Medicus and Behrenbruch accounts for 6% of the $5.3b Telix. So neither of them is at risk of selling pencils or shining shoes in Collins Street.

Beats the dole queue

The sector has experienced a rash of CEO exits – and an influx of new ones. The signs to date suggest that many of the newbies are taking only modest salary increments and occasional haircuts.

CSL (ASX:CSL) is yet to appoint a new CEO.

But you can bet your bottom greenback he or she won’t be paid less than Paul McKenzie (who exited in April as the company’s woes mounted).

At the smaller end, reality bites.

This month, Dr Michael Baker reported for duty at the $6m market cap, repurposed drug developer Percheron Therapeutics (ASX:PER), on a base cash salary of $375,000.

Predecessor Dr James Garner pocketed $581,567 in the 2025-26 year, plus $87,177 of share-based payments.

At Genetic Signatures (ASX:GSS) – currently at the epicentre of an acrimonious takeover drama – Maria Halasz signed on in February on a base salary of $400,000.

That was a modest kick-up on the $365,400 base salary paid to predecessor Alison Rossiter in the 2024-25 year (Rossiter also received a $250,000 sign-on bonus in that year).

At Neurizon Therapeutics (ASX:NUZ), Dr Chris Bremer started this month on a $450,000 base salary.

Before resigning on March 16 this year, his predecessor Dr Michael Thurn earned a base $330,638 and a total $485,000 for the incomplete financial year.

Last week Biotron (ASX:BIT) appointed Glenn Gilbert as CEO.

The former Rhythm Biosciences (ASX:RHY) chief starts on a $250,000 base salary and 100m unlisted out-of-the-money options.

Long-serving Biotron predecessor Dr Michelle Miller took home a base $341,457 in the 2024-25 year (the 2025-26 annual report is not yet available).

While some ‘smaller’ CEOs may feel aggrieved, many will be grateful to be paid at all.

Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals (ASX:PAR) last month entered voluntary administration after its stalled knee osteoarthritis (OA) trial.

Following two phase III flops – one of them also for knee OA – Cynata Therapeutics (ASX:CYP) retrenched most of its staff, including CEO Kilian Kelly.

Kelly stays on as an unpaid director.

Wexford Hayes stresses that rem packages aren’t a ‘one size fit all’ proposition.

“While the report provides a useful guide, it is important to note its historical nature together with the personal circumstances that are attached to each role and benchmark”.

At Stockhead we tell it as it is. While Neurizon is a Stockhead advertiser, the company did not sponsor this article.

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