Gurnani earned ~ 1.46bn to remain highest-paid CEO
While Tech Ma hind ra Chief Executive Officer C PG ur na ni continues to earn the highest remuneration among IT giants, in gross salary terms most CE Os took home a modest package led by Wipro' s Ab id ali Ne emu chw ala.
Gurnani earned ~1.46 billion in 2017-18, which is 3,150 times the median employee remuneration (MRE) at the company. However, Gurnani's remuneration consisted of ~1.42 billion in stock options granted to him in 2013 and exercised during the current financial year.
His actual gross salary component was ~27.7 million. In fact, Gurnani's total earning in FY18 declined by 3 per cent compared to the previous year while his actual salary (minus earning from the stock options) grew almost 10 per cent.
During the same period, vice chairman Vine et Nay ya r' s remuneration jumped 101 per cent to Rs 401 million. The percentage increase in M RE for Tech Ma hind ra employees in FY 18 was 9.19 percent, while the fiscal year itself saw the company shedding head count by a little lessthan5,000.
“An increase of 0.22 percent was given to employees during the year under review. There was an increase of 8 percent in the remuneration of managerial personnel mainly on account of exercise of stock options granted earlier ,” the company said in its annual report.
Neemuchwala on the other hand took home ~182.3 million during the same period, of which ~63 million consisted of gross salary and a little more than ~100 million was in the form of stock options. His remuneration which is almost 338 times of the MRE, increased by 34.5 per cent during the year. The MRE of employees across the company increased 3.25 per cent during the financial year from ~5,23,000 to ~5,40,000.
Even Salil Parekh, who took over as Info sys CEO in the final quarter of the last financial year, earned almost ~40 million ,273 times the MRE at the company. Hispredecessor, Vishal Sikka, earned almost ~130 million, of which ~60 million was the gross salary before he re signed in August last year. Parekh'se arnings did not include the hefty stock options bestowed upon Sikka. The MRE for Infosys increased six percent during the year.
T CS has maintained the lowest CEO M RE ratio of 212 with Chief Executive Officer Ra je sh Go pi nathan taking home ~125 million during the year. His gross salary component is the lowest among his peer sat ~16.24 million. The rather modest earnings also reflect in theme re 0.57 percent increase in M RE for T CS employees during 2017-18.
While H CL' san nu al compensation numbers are not out yet ,2016-17 witnessed a five percent risein MRE. The overall slowdown in head count has helped companies protect margins to some extent. According to estimates by JP Morgan researchers, reduction in employee expense accounted for almost35-40percent margin gain for Tech Ma hind ra between December 2016-17 and December 2017-18.
"Companies will need to get other structural margin levers to operate more strongly, given thatu ti lisa ti on may need to moderate from the current peak (85 percent ex-trainees) and can no longer be relied upon to drive margins ," according to the JP Morgan report released last month.