If your 2025 raise felt a little light, you are not alone. Raleigh-area public-company chiefs collected some truly jaw-dropping pay packages last year. The Triangle’s single top-paid public-company CEO hauled in about $25 million in total compensation, and the region’s public-company leaders together reported roughly $192 million. Much of that headline money arrived in the form of stock awards or one-time grants that can bulk up a single year’s tally, widening an already stark gap with typical local wages as the region’s economy keeps booming.
According to Triangle Business Journal, the ranking, built from companies’ 2025 proxy filings, covered 27 local public-company executives and featured seven CEOs who crossed the $10 million mark. The outlet reports that the top earner alone landed roughly $25 million in total 2025 compensation, while the group as a whole notched about $192 million in reported pay.
Those Triangle totals line up with a national surge in executive pay. Equilar found that median CEO pay jumped sharply in 2025, and Boardroom Alpha counted roughly 207 U.S. chiefs who cleared $25 million in fiscal 2025. Both analyses highlight the same culprit behind the spike: equity awards, especially very large packages that are almost entirely stock based. Investors and corporate-governance advocates have protested some of the splashiest arrangements, but the overall pattern remains widespread.
How Accounting Rules and One-Time Grants Skew a Single Year
Public companies must disclose the grant-date fair value of stock and option awards in their proxy statements. That means a multiyear or performance-based equity grant shows up as one big number on the Summary Compensation Table, even if the executive will not see that value in cash anytime soon. The SEC’s proxy disclosure guidance lays out this treatment and helps explain why a CEO’s reported pay can suddenly spike in a year when salary and annual bonus barely move. For anyone scanning the eye-popping totals, that grant-date accounting quirk matters a lot: a $20 million equity award booked in one year does not translate into $20 million of instant take-home pay.
Why the Triangle Numbers Matter Locally
The Triangle’s specific corporate mix makes it especially sensitive to these outsized grants. A handful of large stock awards at big public employers, fast-growing tech players, or life-sciences firms can shift the regional pay picture in a hurry. Those employers include well-known public companies and Research Triangle Park issuers that report on varying fiscal calendars, which can muddy year-to-year comparisons. The Raleigh News & Observer rundown of major local employers illustrates how big payrolls and recent industry swings feed directly into the compensation debate that residents and policymakers are watching closely.
Shareholder Scrutiny and What to Watch Next
Investors are not powerless spectators. Many companies, including regional banks and other large Triangle-area issuers, put nonbinding "say-on-pay" proposals in front of shareholders at annual meetings, and the supporting proxy disclosures are public. The SEC filing for First Citizens’ 2026 proxy, for instance, spells out its say-on-pay resolution along with detailed executive-compensation tables that shareholders can scrutinize. At the same time, advocacy groups have amplified worries that CEO pay has been racing ahead of wage growth for rank-and-file employees, a concern echoed in national critiques of 2025 pay patterns.
Triangle Business Journal assembled the local list and notes that subscribers can dig into the full ranking of 27 CEOs. The data highlight how just a few mega-grants can dramatically reshape the Triangle’s executive-compensation landscape from one year to the next. The real test comes with the next proxy season, when fresh filings will reveal whether 2026 delivers a replay of last year’s massive awards or a swing back toward more predictable, performance-linked pay.
