MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT) paid Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella $96.50 million for fiscal year 2025, according to the Summary Compensation Table in the company's latest filed proxy statement. That total covers salary, bonus, stock and option awards and all other compensation. It is the figure the company itself reports, not an estimate.
Against that, the buying record is empty. Satya Nadella has made no open-market purchase of Microsoft stock in our Form 4 record, and that is ordinary rather than suspicious: most chief executives are paid in stock and never buy more. Open-market buys are Form 4 code P only, so awards and option exercises do not count toward that record.
The composition matters more than the headline total. Base salary was $2,500,000, which is a small fraction of the $96.50 million reported for the year. The remainder is made up of the other Summary Compensation Table lines, principally equity awards and other compensation, meaning most of what he was paid arrives as stock rather than cash.
That structure is the reason the buying record reads the way it does. An executive who already receives the large majority of annual pay in company shares has limited reason to add to the position with cash in the open market. The exposure is granted rather than purchased.
Satya Nadella has held the chief executive job since February 4th, 2014. Over that stretch the shares have returned 949.5684582189095%. Microsoft now carries a market capitalisation of $3,973,186,846,720, which places this pay package at one of the largest companies in Technology Services.
There is a limit to what any of this proves. Compensation is set by a board committee against peer benchmarks and performance targets, and a large number is not by itself a verdict on how well the company has been run. The long-run share return since February 4th, 2014 is a fact about the stock, not a direct measure of any single executive's contribution.
The absence of purchases is equally limited as a signal. A chief executive who never buys is not expressing doubt, and one who buys a token amount is not necessarily expressing conviction. The distinction our record keeps is narrow and literal: an award is not a purchase, and an option exercise is not a purchase. Only a code P transaction on a Form 4 counts, and there is none here.
What the filings do establish is straightforward. Microsoft reported $96.50 million in total compensation for Satya Nadella in fiscal 2025, of which $2,500,000 was salary, and the open-market purchase column for him remains empty across our Form 4 record.
Sources: the company's latest filed proxy statement and SEC Form 4 filings via EDGAR, reviewed by InsiderBuying.com.
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