Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. CEO Richard Adkerson Salary & Net Worth

Who Is Richard Adkerson?

Richard Adkerson is a mining executive. For those who are curious, he started out as an accountant in the tumultuous oil and gas industry of the 1970s. Eventually, he joined the mining company Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. in 1989, where he has been the CEO since the early 2000s. The company is known for being both one of the biggest producers of copper and one of the biggest producers of molybdenum in the entire world. On top of that, Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. produces gold as well.

What Is Richard Adkerson's Salary?

Adkerson's compensation hasn't seen a great deal of change from 2018 to 2020. He received a total of $13,851,162 in 2020. Before that, he received a total of $12,762,546 in 2019 and a total of $13,781,040 in 2018.

In further detail, Adkerson received $3,613,333 in cash-based compensation, $9,683,022 in equity-based compensation, and $554,807 in other forms of compensation in 2020. Most of that $3,613,333 in cash-based compensation came from his bonus plus other non-equity incentives of $3,000,000 rather than his base salary of $613,333. Meanwhile, most of that $9,683,022 in equity-based compensation came from $6,697,622 in stock awards, with the rest being $2,985,400 in option awards. The proportions in 2019 and 2018 were quite similar to those in 2020.

Besides this, some people might have heard of Adkerson because he received $55 million in total compensation in 2013, which was enough to make him the third most-compensated U.S. executive in that year. It was an extraordinary sum paid out for extraordinary reasons. In short, Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. decided to give Adkerson a one-time grant of $35.2 million in stocks in exchange for the termination of his employment agreement, thus turning him into an at-will employee. The company decided that said course of action was better than letting him retain the right to claim a potential $46 million severance payment in cash.

What Is Richard Adkerson's Net Worth?

Moving on, Adkerson's net worth is not public information. There is one estimate that says that he had at least $160 million in December of 2020, which was based on his ownership of Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. stocks, his sale of Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. stocks, and his annual compensation. Said estimate is based on incomplete information, so it has limited reliability.

What Do We Know about Richard Adkerson's Personal Life?

Both of Adkerson's parents are known to have come from small farming families in Lauderdale County in the state of Tennessee. It is known that his father J.W. Adkerson enlisted right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the result that he served as both a Marine and a Seabee in World War II. Similarly, his mother's twin brother William Lawton Thornley served in the Army in the Pacific theater. Not much is known about the rest of Adkerson's family. However, it is interesting to note that there is a Richard C. Adkerson Family Foundation, which isn't particularly high-profile but is nonetheless active as a charitable organization.