India Inc pay gap: CEOs earn up to 1,200 times of average staff
A huge pay gap between CEOs and other employees at Indian companies has come to the fore, with the biggest listed blue-chip firms doling out to their top executives salary packages of up to 1,200-times of their median employee remunerations.
An analysis of remuneration disclosures made by top listed companies forming part of the blue-chip index Sensex shows that the pay packages of seniormost personnel such as CEOs and executive chairmen continue to remain high and rose further at most private sector firms during 2016-17.
Among the 30 Sensex firms, at least 15 have already disclosed an increase in the ratio of top executive pay with that of the median employee remuneration for 2016-17.
Nine of the Sensex firms are yet to disclose these numbers and therefore the tally may go up.
Six Sensex companies have reported some decline in this ratio and these include Wipro (down from 260 times to 259 times), Infosys (283 times), Dr Reddy’s Lab (from 312 times to 233 times) and Hero MotoCorp (from 755 times to 731 times).
Reliance Industries did not disclose this ratio in its latest annual report published on the website. While its chief Mukesh Ambani has capped his pay at ₹15 crore for many years now, the ratio was high at 205 times in 2014-15.
Among other major Sensex firms, TCS saw the ratio between top-paid executive pay and the median employee remuneration rise to 515 times (from 460 times in previous year), while the same for Lupin stood at 1,263-times (down from 1,317 times) for chairman. The ratio for the CEO at Lupin was lower at 217-times.
Among banks, the ratio was highest for HDFC Bank’s CEO Aditya Puri (whose pay package rose 20% to over ₹10 crore) where it rose from 179 to 187 times. Kotak Mahindra Bank saw the ratio rise from 42 to 48, ICICI from 100 to 112- times and Axis Bank from 72-times to 78-times. At HDFC Ltd, the ratio for the CEO Keki Mistry rose from 88 times to 92 times, while the same for chairman Deepak Parekh was much less at 17 times.