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Business News/ Companies / Who are India’s lowest-paid CEOs?
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Who are India’s lowest-paid CEOs?

CEOs of Cummins India, Shriram Transport Finance and Federal Bank get paid salaries that raise no eyebrows

Photo: MintPremium
Photo: Mint

Mumbai: Lists dedicated to the top-paid corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) and their lucrative compensation packages abound. But ever wondered who the most reasonably paid top executives are? These are executives who run businesses for companies that are all part of the BSE top 100 list, but still get paid salaries that raise no eyebrows.

A Mint analysis of the top 100 companies shows that the CEOs of Cummins India Ltd, Shriram Transport Finance Co. Ltd and Federal Bank Ltd were among the least-paid chief executives.

The analysis of the remuneration of chief executives and managing directors was carried out among BSE 100 companies. However, top executives who were also promoters of the companies were removed from the list. Public sector enterprises were also not considered.

The analysis looked at the compensation declared as part of the annual report, which does not include long-term incentives such as the value of stock options.

Cummins India’s chairman and managing director (CMD) Anant J. Talaulicar, who earned 24 lakh for fiscal 2014, according to the firm’s annual report, was the least paid.

A lifetime employee at the manufacturer of power generation equipment and engines, 53-year old Talaulicar has been associated with the 3,899 crore company since 1988. He has been leading Cummins India as its CMD since 2003. Cummins India is part of Cummins Group, which has eight legal entities. Cummins India is its only listed entity but Talaulicar is MD of the group as well. It wasn’t clear whether he also drew a salary at the group level.

The company declined to comment on the compensation paid to Talaulicar.

The 49-year-old joined Shriram Transport in 1987 and has been leading the country’s largest truck financing company since 2012.

The company which, along with the rest of the industry, has gone through turbulent times in the last few years, reported a 7% drop in net profit to 1,264.21 crore in fiscal 2014. Its stock gained 9.7% over the fiscal year in comparison to an 18.9% rise in the BSE Sensex.

“Many of our senior executives including Umesh are part of the Owner Group whose compensation includes long-term benefits apart from their fixed salaries...Wherever, senior executives are not a part of the Owner Group their salaries are benchmarked to the respective industries," said G.S. Sundararajan, group director, Shriram Group, in response to an emailed query.

Of the 20 lowest paid CEOs, one-fourth were from banks and financial institutions. Federal Bank’s MD Shyam Srinivasan earned 84 lakh and IndusInd Bank Ltd’s CEO Romesh Sobti earned 3.1 crore in the year ended 31 March.

Mails sent to the banks on 16 September remained unanswered.

Globally, chief executives of banks are among those who earn the highest compensation; in India, the Reserve Bank of India in 2012 issued guidelines that included capping the variable component of the compensation of bank executives at 70% of the fixed pay in a year.

“If you add the long-term incentives paid to bank executives, their compensation levels improve sharply to take them to the top bracket of pay in the country," said Anandorup Ghose, rewards consulting practice leader at Aon Hewitt India, adding that about 70% of companies have long-term incentives by way of employee stock options or restricted stock units.

According to Ghose, Indian companies have moved from a structure of having 80% of fixed compensation and 20% variable pay to a 50:25:25 structure, with 50% being fixed and variable and long term incentives making up 25% each. A recent survey by Aon Hewitt on executive compensation pegged median CEO salary for fiscal 2014 at 2.7 crore.

Among the BSE 100 companies included in the analysis, salaries ranged from 24 lakh to above 21 crore. The highest earning executive in this list was Cipla Ltd’s MD and global CEO Subhanu Saxena, drawing 21.6 crore, as per the company’s annual report. To be sure, Infosys Ltd recently hired Vishal Sikka at a salary of 30 crore.

Not surprisingly, executives from home-grown business houses appeared to be paid less than their multinational peers.

Executives of companies like Tata Global Beverages Ltd, Tata Power Co. Ltd and Tata Steel Ltd made the list of 20 least-paid CEOs. Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd paid the CEO of its financial services arm Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services Ltd 2.6 crore last fiscal and the CEO of JSW Steel Ltd earned less than 5 crore last fiscal. Mails sent to each of these companies on 16 September remained unanswered.

An executive’s compensation has a lot of nuances, explains Santrupt B. Misra, CEO, Carbon Black Business, and director, group human resources of, the Aditya Birla Group.

“Any senior executive’s compensation is based on how long they have been in the position and the previous salary they were drawing. Salaries are benchmarked with industry, size of companies and the experience of the CEO," Misra said.

Chief executives of so-called core sector firms were also among the lowest paid.

Core sector companies like power and cement are process industries, which, as a rule, offer a discount to compensation levels in consumer or financial services firms. In the latter, very often pay is driven by the incumbent than the role, says Ghose of Aon Hewitt.

A company’s capacity to pay their executive also depends on the nature of business and the cycle of growth it is in, added P. Thiruvengadam, senior director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd.

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Published: 23 Sep 2014, 12:00 AM IST
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