The CEO of Syneos Health Inc., a clinical and commercial solution organization for biopharmaceutical development, received a 34.2 percent increase in compensation during 2017.

Alistair MacDonald made $5.8 million in 2017 ,which is up from the $4.3 million he made in 2016. The increase can be attributed to the company’s recent merger, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing found here.

On Aug. 1, 2017, the company closed a merger between INC Research Holdings, Inc. and Inventive Health Inc. and the combined entity was renamed Syneos Health.

Following the merger, the compensation committee conducted another review of the peer group and executive officers’ compensation structure.

The committee said it re-reviewed compensation of the executive offers and made changes where appropriate to align to the larger size of the combined company as well as the revised peer group.

The committee increased the base salaries of all executives in 2017 as a result of the market review at the end of 2016, and then increased certain executives’ base salaries in August 2017 as a result of job scope changes related to the merger.

For the fiscal year 2017, actual management incentive plan cash awards resulted in a payout level at 59.5 percent.

Performance based compensation is a substantial portion of each executive’s total compensation. Most executives had over 70 percent of their total 2017 compensation linked to the stock price.

MacDonald made a yearly salary of $852,703 ,up from the previous year’s $583,262. His stock awards also rose from $2.46 million in 2016 to $4.25 million to 2017.

MacDonald’s total compensation in 2017 was $5,870,074 compared to 2016’s $4,372,758.

For 2017, the last completed fiscal year, the median of the annual total compensation for all employees of the company was $70,198.

Based on this information, the reasonable estimate for the ratio of the annual total compensation of MacDonald to the median of the annual total compensation of all employees was 84 to 1.

Syneos is purpose built for biopharmaceutical acceleration, creating better, smarter, faster ways to help clients navigate the increasingly complex marketplace.

The business addresses today’s market realities through clinical and commercial sharing expertise and data to meet the needs of emerging and global biopharmaceutical companies.