Dallas-Fort Worth’s highest paid executives work in fields just as varied as the region’s economy at large.

The top 10 individuals work in financial services, restaurants, communication, furniture and healthcare. Together, their compensation packages are worth about $401 million.

The best compensated executive with North Texas ties is James George Coulter, the founder and executive chairman of TPG Inc, an asset management company. TPG invests in a variety of industries, including private equity and real estate. Coulter received $72.7 million in compensation — including salary, bonuses and stocks — in the most recent fiscal year. That’s about 240 times more than the company’s median employee pay.

Of course, salary isn’t the only way these execs are paid — in fact, regular salaries only made up about 6.5% of compensation among the top 100 executives at D-FW companies last year.

The highest share of executive compensation came from restricted stock, or company shares that executives can own after meeting certain requirements. That accounted for about 68% of total compensation.

Other forms of compensation included cash bonuses, incentive plan awards and company options.

Almost all of the best compensated executives on our list work for one of the top 150 companies in the D-FW area. Only three don’t and are at high tech or biotech companies: Arthur Kuan of CG Oncology, Hyunsu Jung of Hyperion DeFi and Paul Wagner of Forte Biosciences.

Across the top 100, the average executive of a D-FW company is a 58-year-old man. Only 10 of the top 100 executives were women.

See how the 100 best-paid executives stack up:

The data for The Dallas Morning News’ top 100 richest executives comes from S&P Capital IQ, a financial database, as of Sept. 21, 2026.

Using the database’s company screener, The News identified 556 employees working for Dallas-Fort Worth-area, publicly-traded companies who received any executive compensation in the 2025 fiscal year. Duplicate entries were removed and the remaining individuals were ranked by FY2025 compensation. The top 100 highest-compensated employees make up this list. Trends in the list were then analyzed by DMN reporters.