It was a solid year for big biotech Amgen, which won some significant court, and market, battles with its PCSK9 cholesterol drug Repatha. The drug, and other recently launched meds, helped boost revenues by 6% to $23 billion, while net income was up by double digits, something that was not easy for many drugmakers to do last year.

Also showing growth was CEO Robert Bradway’s total compensation package which was up about $750,000, a 4.7% boost, to a total of $16.85 million, according to Amgen’s recently filed proxy statement.

While his base pay did not change much at $1.5 million, up about $25,000, there was a stock option award worth about $3.3 million. That was enough to offset a $2.5 million reduction in restricted stock handed out last year, shares that still amounted to about $7.7 million, and accounted for most of the boost.

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In explaining exec comp for the year, the board made clear that Bradway and his colleagues did a good job of hitting the goals set out for them. In addition to seeing revenue growth, the proxy points out that Amgen continues to make good on its expense shrinking, a move started in 2014 that resulted in big job cuts. It says it has saved $1.5 billion in annual costs since then.

RELATED: Amgen will chop up to 1,100 more jobs in global restructuring

The company also pointed to strides the executive team has made with Repatha, although some of the progress has come as a result of legal, rather than marketing, battles won.

In fact, it was a particularly adventurous year for Repatha, after a judge ruled last year that Sanofi and Regeneron's competing PCSK9 drug Praluent violated Amgen's patents in the field. That conflict got even more exciting in January, when those two were ordered to halt sales of Praluent. They won a stay on appeal, but the wins have left Repatha in the cat-bird seat in an area that has huge upside potential.

RELATED: Is the PCSK9 patent fight giving Amgen's Repatha a boost? Script numbers say so

At the $16.85 million level, Bradway's pay outpaced that of CEOs at some of the Europe-based companies, where pay packages tend to be more restrained. Novartis chief Joe Jimenez earned total pay of 11.99 million Swiss francs, while Roche’s Severin Schwan racked up a 2016 pay package of 11.64 million francs.

RELATED: Roche and Novartis CEOs nab all-but-matching pay of 12M francs for 2016

However, Pascal Soriot, CEO of U.K.-based AstraZeneca, saw his pay jump 68% to £13.4 million, up from £7.96 million in 2015, putting him at about $16.3 million, and so close to Bradway.

At AbbVie, a company that reported revenues of $25.6 billion last year, CEO Richard Gonzalez saw his pay rise to $20.97 million in 2016, up from $20.81 million the year before. Less than $12,000 of the increase was from a bump-up in his base salary, which rose to $1.6 million.