Mike Lyons, CEO of Milwaukee-based Fiserv Inc., earned $70.3 million in 2025, ranking 23rd among the nation’s top 100 highest-paid chief executives. The compensation was 798 times the average employee’s pay at the payments processor, according to data compiled by Equilar and reported by Urban Milwaukee.
Lyons assumed the CEO role in May 2025 after the company’s board appointed him President and CEO-Elect in January. He replaced Frank Bisignano, who resigned to become Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. Bisignano’s total compensation in 2024 was $23.8 million, making Lyons’s 2025 package nearly three times higher despite the company’s weak stock performance.
The surge in Lyons’s pay reflects broader trends in executive compensation. The median pay for the top 100 CEOs surged 35.8% to $39.4 million in 2025, marking a record high in Equilar’s study history. The gap between CEO and worker pay widened dramatically: the median pay ratio expanded by 36.5%, with CEOs now earning 475 times more than the average worker, up from 348 times the prior year.
Lyons’s compensation package included a base salary of $1.3 million announced when he was appointed CEO-Elect in January 2025. In February 2026, Fiserv granted him an additional supplemental equity award valued at approximately $30 million to support retention and execution of the company’s strategic plan. The company also provided Lyons with a nearly $12 million cash replacement payment when he joined, designed to compensate for unvested equity awards he forfeited from his previous role at PNC Financial Services Group.
The disparity in pay reflects a long-term shift in American corporate compensation. In the late 1970s, it was considered newsworthy when a single executive earned $1 million annually. Today, the highest-paid CEO in 2025, Elon Musk, received $132.3 billion in compensation. Management theorist Peter Drucker once suggested that executives should limit their pay to 20 times what rank-and-file workers earned, a standard that has been abandoned across corporate America.
Sources
- Urban Milwaukee — Reported Lyons’s 2025 compensation of $70.3 million, his ranking among top 100 CEOs, the 798:1 pay ratio at Fiserv, Bisignano’s 2024 compensation of $23.8 million, and median CEO pay data from Equilar showing a 35.8% surge to $39.4 million.
- Payments Dive — Reported Frank Bisignano’s 2024 compensation climbed 57% to $27.94 million.
- SEC Filings (SEC.gov) — Confirmed Lyons’s appointment as President and CEO-Elect effective January 27, 2025, with a base salary of $1.3 million.
- Banking Dive — Reported Lyons’s appointment as CEO on May 6, 2025, replacing Bisignano who became Social Security Administration Commissioner.
- Investing.com — Reported Fiserv’s supplemental equity award of approximately $30 million to CEO Lyons in February 2026.
