Mukesh Ambani gets 205-times of median pay; ITC's Deveshwar 439-times
New Delhi: Billionaire industrialist and India's richest Mukesh Ambani has not taken a pay hike for seven years, but his salary is over 205-times that of the median employee remuneration at Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL).
However, this ratio stands much higher at 439 times in case of ITC Ltd Executive Chairman Y C Deveshwar. The same ratio stands much lower at 89-times in case of IT major Wipro's Chairman and Managing Director Azim Premji, and just at 19-times for mortgage giant HDFC's Chairman Deepak Parekh for the latest fiscal 2014-15.
However, HDFC Bank's Managing Director Aditya Puri got a remuneration that was 117-times of the median employee pay at the bank, while for ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar it was 97 times and at over 74 times for Axis Bank's Managing Director and CEO Shikha Sharma.
For IT giant Infosys' CEO Vishal Sikka, his pay was 116 times of the median employee pay at the company. The same ratio for HUL's CEO Sanjiv Mehta was 93 times, but much higher at 293 times for Vedanta Limited's Chairman Navin Agarwal.
Listed companies have begun disclosing these ratios, as also other comparisons such as salary hikes for the top management personnel and an average staff, for the first time pursuant to the new Companies Act and Sebi's latest Corporate Governance Code coming into force.
While a majority of the companies are still in the process of disclosing these details, the disclosures made so far by the top companies show a wide variance in these ratios, while there is also a huge difference between the pay hike figures for the top management personnel and an average staff member in many cases.
However, there are a few cases where the increase in the median employee remuneration is almost equal or even higher than the same for the CEOs and other key management personnel. In case of RIL, Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani has kept his salary capped at Rs 15 crore for seven years now, while the median remuneration of employees increased by 3.71 per cent to Rs 7.29 lakh during 2014-15.
The total remuneration of Key Managerial Personnel in fact dipped by 1.93 per cent to Rs 73.28 crore. ITC Chairman Y C Deveshwar's remuneration rose by 24 per cent during the year, as against a rise of 14 per cent in the company's median employee remuneration.
The overall Key Managerial Personnel remuneration rose by 20 per cent. Deveshwar's gross remuneration in 2014-15 stood at over Rs 15 crore, but his net pay was much lower at Rs 7.3 crore.
In case of Wipro, Premji saw his pay decline by 53 per cent to Rs 4.78 crore, while Median Employee Remuneration rose by 9.5 per cent. Wipro CEO T K Kurien got a pay package that was 170 times of the median employee remuneration, while he got a hike of 39 per cent. At HDFC Ltd also, Vice Chairman and CEO Keki Mistry's remuneration was 83 times of the median employee pay, while the same for Managing Director Renu Sud Karnad was 77 times.
The remuneration rose by 15 per cent for both Mistry and Karnad, while the increase in the median remuneration of employees in fiscal year 2014-15 stood at 16 per cent.
