Liberty Media raced into first in 2025.
In his first year on the job, Derek Chang, the CEO of Formula 1’s parent company, was Colorado’s highest compensated executive among publicly traded companies in 2025, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He succeeded Greg Maffei, whose $24 million ranked second on BusinessDen’s 2024 list. The vast majority of Chang’s nearly $40 million package came from stock awards, some of which were tied to him becoming CEO at the beginning of last year.
Each year, publicly traded companies have to file proxy statements disclosing compensation paid to their top executives the previous year. Those amounts include base salary, bonuses, cash incentives and the value of stock options, plus other perks like trips on the corporate jet.
BusinessDen used these proxy documents to compile a list of the top 25 paid executives in the Denver region.
Ibotta CEO Bryan Leach sat atop 2024’s list with a $29 million package, mostly made up of stock options tied to the couponing app going public that year. In 2025, Leach’s $11 million compensation, $550,000 of that being base salary, placed him fourteenth.
Chang, the Liberty Media CEO, got a $2.2 million base salary along with a $1.2 million sign-on bonus. Thatap a healthy upgrade from the $333,694 he made last year as a member of the company’s board, which he has been on since 2021.
The company handing out the second-highest package last year was Westminster tech firm Trimble. It paid CEO Robert Painter $19.1 million last year, slightly up from the $18.9 million he took home in 2024.
Painter took $950,000 in base salary each of the last three years, but he saw his stock awards and options inflate alongside it to bring up his total.
Bracken Darrell rounded out the top three with $18.9 million from VF Corp. He nearly doubled the $10.7 million package he received in 2024 while overseeing brands like Vans, The North Face and Timberland.
While the top three were judicious in their personal use of their company’s personal jets — Chang was the only one who reported flying to the tune of $42,380 — others spent much more time in the sky.
Javier Rodriguez, the Davita CEO who finished fourth this year after 2024 had him in third, tallied $460,615 in personal time spent on the kidney dialysis company’s aircraft.
Alex Karp, whose Palantir fled Denver to Florida earlier this year, accounted for $2 million worth of chartered flights, as well another $2.5 million in personal security costs. Those are up from the $1.8 million and $1 million he reported spending on those last year.
But the two men had nothing on the $3.4 million in air time Echostar CEO Charlie Ergen racked up last year. Ergen, who founded both Echostar and Dish in 1980, returned to the top post in November of last year. His $4.6 million package missed the cut for 2025, though his predecessor Hamid Akhavan, placed 21.
Innospec CEO Patrick Williams once again got creative in his pay package, getting $40,000 in the form of a suite at Folsom Field to watch his alma mater University of Colorado Buffs play football for another season. His country club dues also appeared to go up, with Innospec covering 50% of the cost at $45,080, up from $41,989 in 2024.
Perks like those are often listed in companies’ proxies under the “other” category. Others include car allowances, tax preparation services, executive wellness programs and something called a “life spending allowance.” Ovintiv CEO Brendan McCracken received $39,600 of that “to use… in a manner that is most meaningful to (him).”
Along with working for a top Colorado public company, it also paid to leave.
Chris Wright, who departed Liberty Energy to become the U.S. Secretary of Energy in early 2025, nearly tripled his $5.8 million package he got in 2024. Of the $16.7 million he garnered in 2025, only $80,481 of that came in the form of cash salary. The remaining amount was from shares that vested after he departed the company he founded in 2011.
Of the 25 CEOs on the list, the median compensation package decreased by 1.4% from 2024 to 2025. Over half, 13, of the CEOs on the list saw a drop in the value of their pay packages in 2025.
The group as a whole received a combined $327.2 million in total compensation for the year, an average of $13.1 million per exec. Thatap up from the $320.6 million total and $12.8 million average CEOs raked in during 2024.
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