Corporate spending on executive security, private aviation, and personal drivers has climbed for four straight years with no sign of slowing
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The median reported value of personal aircraft use for S&P 100 CEOs rose from $129,000 in 2021 to $210,000 in 2024, according to compensation consulting firm FW Cook's 2025 Executive Perquisites Report. Median security spending climbed from $75,000 to $111,000 over the same period. These are the disclosed costs, reported as perquisites in proxy filings, and they represent the low end of what companies are paying to keep their top executives insulated from the public.
The numbers look different at the top. Meta $META spent more than $27 million in 2024 to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg, up from $24 million in 2023, according to a Financial Times analysis of proxy filings. Blackstone reported the highest total security spending among S&P 500 companies in 2025 at $13.5 million, according to Equilar research. Lockheed Martin $LMT increased its security spending 798% in a single year, from $149,069 to $1,338,056, according to Equilar's analysis published on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.
The trend is broad and accelerating. It also informs Starbucks $SBUX' decision to let CEO Brian Niccol use the company's private jet for all travel, including personal trips, and dedicate $1 million to security in 2025.
The data is consistent across multiple sources: More companies are providing security-related compensation to their CEOs, and spending more on it when they do.
Among S&P 100 companies, the share providing security perquisites to their CEO rose from 38% in 2021 to 59% in 2024, according to FW Cook. Equilar's study of the 500 largest U.S. public companies by revenue established that 33.8% of executives received at least one security-related perk in 2024, up from 23.3% in 2020. For CEOs, the figure rose from 29.5% to 43.7% over the same period.
ISS-Corporate found that the number of S&P 500 companies disclosing CEO security benefits has doubled since 2020, with the median value of those benefits reaching $76,032 as of last June. Equilar's most recent study, examining S&P 500 proxy filings through April 2026, determined that over a third of companies provided security perks, up 12.8% from the prior year, with the median value reaching $130,468 for a 20% increase.
The December 2024 fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan accelerated the pattern. Proxy disclosures suggest the upward trend in CEO personal security perquisites was already underway and continued at a similar pace, according to an analysis by Compensia Advisory Partners (CAP). No companies in CAP's sample eliminated CEO security perks during the period reviewed. The benefit, once introduced, appears to stick.
Starbucks is not alone in requiring its CEO to fly private. A majority of S&P 100 CEOs fly on a private aircraft as part of the company's security policy, according to FW Cook. Lockheed Martin's chief security officer mandated that CEO James Taiclet use corporate aircraft for both personal and business travel, according to Equilar, allocating $1,194,805 of Taiclet's compensation to security, with an additional $928,379 for personal use of the aircraft.
What has changed is the degree to which companies are expanding these arrangements. Among companies in CAP's sample, 29% disclosed a dollar-value cap on the CEO's aircraft use for 2024, with a median cap of $225,000. For 2025, more than a third of those companies either eliminated the cap or increased it. None reduced it. Every company that introduced a CEO aircraft perk in 2025 cited security-related considerations in its proxy disclosure.
The Starbucks filing fits this pattern. The company's proxy statement, citing an independent security study, noted "enhanced media attention" and "the current threat landscape" as reasons for Niccol's use of private aviation for all air travel. Niccol's personal, non-commuting flights had been limited to $250,000 annually, but the board removed that cap in September 2025, according to Fox Business.
The rise in executive perquisites coincides with a widening gap in overall compensation. In 2024, the median CEO pay ratio among S&P 500 companies rose to 192:1, up from 186:1 in 2023, according to the 2025 Equilar/Associated Press CEO Pay Study. The median employee earned $85,419. The AFL-CIO calculated the average S&P 500 CEO pay at $18.9 million in 2024, with the average pay ratio reaching 285:1.
These are economy-wide figures. At Starbucks, the gap between Niccol's compensation and the experience of frontline workers is especially visible. Niccol received about $31 million in total compensation for 2025, while Starbucks baristas have described wages closer to $15 an hour and schedules that fall short of benefits eligibility, as Silvia Baldwin, a barista at a West Philadelphia Starbucks, told Quartz.
The SEC requires companies to disclose executive perquisites as part of compensation, but proxy advisory firm ISS has cited excessive security perquisites as a contributing factor in several negative say-on-pay recommendations. Meanwhile, an ongoing debate at the SEC has considered whether security should be reclassified as a business expense rather than a perquisite, according to Winston & Strawn. Among S&P 500 companies receiving ISS opposition on say-on-pay votes in 2025, high-value security benefits were among the top three areas of criticism, according to an analysis by Pay Governance published on the Harvard Law School Forum.
If reclassified, these costs would no longer appear in the summary compensation tables that shareholders use to evaluate executive pay, making total compensation look smaller even as spending continues to grow. Among the Equilar 100, total perquisites increased 24.2% year over year in 2025.
The question for shareholders is not whether executives face real security threats. They do. The question is whether the speed and scale at which these benefits are expanding, often with caps removed and reimbursement requirements eliminated, reflects a governance process that is keeping pace with the costs it is approving.
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