Fat CEO salaries come under the gaze of shareholders and boards
Remunerations paid to top bosses in corporate India are increasingly coming under scrutiny, just as the gap between salaries of workers and top bosses widens.
The widening gap
Jayadev Galla, CMD of Amara Raja Batteries, took home over Rs 52 crore as compensation in FY23. That was about 1,872 times the median salary of the company's employees. Amara Raja Batteries heads the list of top 10 companies with the widest gap between CEO pay and median employee remuneration.
An analysis of Nifty 500 companies that had released their annual reports for FY23 showed several small- and mid-cap, promoter-driven companies such as Amber Enterprises, JK Paper, Balkrishna Ind and Ratnamani Metals in the top 10, ET had reported in August.
Cheques & Balances: Performance to sign off on CEO pay hikes
While Galla of Amara Raja Batteries received a 38% hike in his pay over the previous year, the company's median employee salary rose 4.5%. The CMD's salary stood at 1,413 times the median employee salary in FY22. To be sure, the company's earnings per share improved from Rs 30 in FY22 to ?40.6 in FY23, indicating greater corporate value.
Large companies such as JSW Steel, Hero MotoCorp and Hindalco also figured in the top 10, paying their CEOs 500-800 times their median employee remuneration. The average gap was 278 times for Nifty 100 companies in FY22, as per data from primeinfobase.com.
An ET report had stated that former TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan had earned a salary of Rs 29 crore in the fiscal year 2022-23, which was an increase of 13% from the previous financial year and a whopping 427 times higher than the median remuneration paid to employees at the IT company.
Amid post-pandemic disruptions, rising inflation,
