CEO salaries at top blue-chips soar; average nears Rs 20 crore

NEW DELHI: In a sharp jump, average CEO salary at top listed companies in the private sector is approaching Rs 20 crore -- double the level seen just two years ago at about Rs 10 crore.

However, this remains less than one-sixth of the average CEO salaries at the top listed companies in the US, which stood at close to USD 20 million (about Rs 130 crore) in 2015 despite a decline from the previous year.

In India, the average CEO salaries at top private companies, on the other hand, is way above the same at their public sector counterparts at just about Rs 25-30 lakh.

An analysis of the CEO salaries for the latest financial year 2015-16 disclosed by the country's top listed companies, forming part of the stock market benchmark index Sensex, shows that they paid an average overall remuneration of close to Rs 19 crore to their top executives.

This includes salary, commissions, allowances, value of all perquisites and ESOPs exercised during the year, among other benefits disclosed by the companies as part of the total remuneration to their top-paid executives which included Executive Chairpersons, CEOs or Managing Directors.

The analysis is based on the disclosures made by 20 out of the total 24 private sector companies on the Sensex, as the remaining four are yet to disclose their figures.

Among the six PSUs on the Sensex, the figure for 2015-16 is available as yet only in case of State Bank of India (SBI), whose Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya got just about Rs 31.1 lakh.

Among the private sector giants on the Sensex, the highest-paid in 2015-16 included L&T's A M Naik (Rs 66.14 crore, more than half of which was 'value of perquisites' at nearly Rs 39 crore), Infosys' Vishal Sikka (Rs 48.73 crore) and Lupin's Desh Bandhu Gupta (Rs 44.8 crore).

Those at the lower end in terms of overall remuneration were mostly bankers and included Axis Bank's Shikha Sharma (Rs 5.5 crore), ICICI Bank's Chanda Kochhar (Rs 6.6 crore), HDFC Bank's Aditya Puri (Rs 9.7 crore).

At housing finance giant HDFC Ltd, Chairman Deepak Parekh was paid just Rs 1.89 crore, while Vice Chairman and CEO Keki Mistry got Rs 9.3 crore and MD Renu Sud Karnad got Rs 8.5 crore.

The latest figures were not available for four companies -- Sun Pharma, Maruti, Hero MotoCorp and Cipla.