Payouts of Tata Motors’ bosses drop as turnaround takes effect

Remuneration of top executives and independent directors at Tata Motors, including that of its managing director and chief executive Guenter Butschek, saw a drop in fiscal 2018 over the last year amid company’s efforts to contain costs and turnaround the domestic operations, according to its latest annual report.

Excluding Butschek, whose total remuneration (including perquisites) came down 10 per cent over a year ago, total payouts for most of the other executives remained unchanged even as perquisites fell.

Butschek’s total compensation, including salary and perquisites, dropped to ~201 million against ~225 million a year ago. The reduction came on back of a steep reduction in perquisites, which came down to ~8.9 million from ~13 million.

Tata Motors appointed Butschek, the former Airbus and Daimler AG executive, for the top job in mid-February 2016 after a global search that lasted almost two years. The firm had proposed an annual package of ~280 million to ~290 million per year for him, and the proposed remuneration was the highest among CEOs in the auto universe in India.

Under his leadership, Tata Motors has executed a turnaround plan which has started yielding results. Sales of company’s passenger vehicles (PV) and commercial vehicles (CV) have reported a strong growth, boosting the underlying profitability and generating free cash flow after many years. In fiscal 2018, the market shares in CV increased by 70bps to 45.1 per cent, and by 60bps to 5.7 per cent in PV, Butschek said in a letter to the shareholders.

“In FY19, we have announced the launch of ‘Turnaround 2.0’ with three clear objectives viz. ‘win decisively’ in CV, ‘win sustainably’ in PV and embed a culture of ‘Turnaround’ deep into the organisation,” said Butschek.

Satish Borwankar, the firm’s chief operating officer, also saw a sharp reduction in his allowances to ~1.3 million from ~8.2 million even as the total payout remained the same as last year. The cut was sharper for independent directors. This is in a sharp contrast to fiscal 2016-17, when payouts to independent directors grew over fiscal 2015-16, despite the company being saddled with losses.

Remuneration of VK Jairath and Falguni Nayar crimped by 22 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively, in fiscal 2018 over a year ago. OP Bhatt and Hanne Sorenen were inducted on the board in May 2017 and January 2018, replacing R Mashelkar and Narsee Munji, hence their remuneration is not comparable to last year’s.

Hoshang Sethna, company secretary, saw the value of perquisites decrease to ~0.26 million from ~0.85 million a year ago even as the total payout remained unchanged over the last year. C Ramakrishnan, chief financial officer who superannuated in September 2017, got a total remuneration of ~42 million (computed for six months). Interestingly, P B Balaji, who replaced him last November, received a much higher payout of ~66 million for the six-month period.

Tata Motors’ standalone net revenues increased by 31.6 per cent to ~584.57 billion for the 12 months to March 31, 2018 and standalone profit before exceptional items and tax for the year came at ~200 million, compared with a loss of ~20.15 billion in the previous year.