Puri top earner among bankers in FY21; Bakhshi forgoes salary

HDFC Bank’s Aditya Puri emerged as the highest grossing banker among the topthree private sector lenders in his retirement year with total emoluments of ~13.82 crore.

His successor Sashidhar Jagdishan, who took over as the chief executive and managing director of the largest private sector lender on October 27, 2020, grossed a salary of ~4.77 crore for the fiscal year, which included payments as a group head till his elevation. Puri’s overall payments included ~3.5 crore as post-retirement benefits.

Its immediate rival ICICI Bank’s MD and CEO Sandeep Bakhshi “voluntarily relinquished” his fixed compensation of basic and supplementary allowances for FY21, which had seen wide-scale impact of the Covid pandemic, according to the second largest lender’s annual report.

Bakhshi, however, did receive allowances and perquisites amounting to ~38.38 lakh, the document said, adding he also got ~63.60 lakh as performance bonus from ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company as deferred variable pay for FY17 and FY18. Amitabh Chaudhry, who has been leading the third largest private sector lender Axis Bank, got paid ~6.52 crore, the bank’s annual report said, adding that the top management was not given any salary increment in FY21.

In the case of ICICI Bank, material risk takers, including executive directors, chief financial officer and company secretary, voluntarily opted for a 10 per cent salary reduction from May 1 in their payments, possibly because of the impact of Covid. Its executive director in-charge of wholesale banking Vishakha Mulye grossed ~5.64 crore, according to the annual report.

When compared with the bank’s median salary, the allowances drawn by Jagdishan were the highest at 139 times the median salary of a bank employee, while Chaudhry earned 104 times the median and ICICI Bank executive directors drew 96 times the median salary.

Data available for ‘crorepati’ bankers, or those earning above ~8.5 lakh a month, revealed that HDFC Bank had 200 executives in this exclusive club, including key management personnel, serving officials and those who left the lender midway through the fiscal year.

In comparison, Axis Bank had 69 bankers in the category who served throughout the year, while 17 employees who would otherwise have been in the club left it midway through the year, as per the annual report.