One of the Nation's Top-Paid CEOs Leads an Unprofitable, Largely Unknown Company Charif Souki of Cheniere Energy, a Houston-based enterprise hoping to one day capitalize on the fracking boom, raked in a whopping $142 million last year.
By Geoff Weiss
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Robert Iger, Marissa Mayer, Leslie Moonves -- all are distinguished leaders with multimillion-dollar salaries to boot. But documents recently filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that one of the highest-paid chief executives in the nation leads a little-known company that has never even turned a profit.
That CEO, Charif Souki, heads up Cheniere Energy, a Houston-based company aiming to be the first to capitalize on the fracking boom by liquefying and exporting shale gases, reports Al Jazeera.
At the helm of this effort, Souki took home $142 million in 2013 -- dwarfing the executive pay grades of far larger energy companies, including Exxon's Rex Tillerson ($28 million) and Chevron's John Watson ($24 million.)
As the majority of Souki's pay is the result of stock options, the towering figure illuminates just how enticed Wall Street is with the idea that the United States could one day become a major exporter of natural gases to the developing world, Al Jazeera reports.
Cheniere's stock price more than doubled in 2013, according to The Wall Street Journal, and today boasts a stock-market value of $12.48 billion -- all despite having lost money every year since its founding in 1996.
