There's been substantial coverage around tech CEO salaries recently. Reports on Infosys CEO's Vishal Sikka's big pay hike, and shareholders protesting the TCS chief's salary and bonus payouts made the rounds recently. But it's not tech that dominates the 'highest paid Indian CEOs' list. TCS Chief N Chandrasekharan does make the top ten list now with his recent pay hike, and Infosys' Vishal Sikka is a new entrant in the top three with his $7.2 million payout.
However, the one with the most gold in their purses is the husband-wife duo at Sun Network, who took home a cool $18 million jointly last year, $9 million each. Their combined salaries accounted for 5% of the company's revenue, an outlier in the Indian industry. The only other CEO that came close was Murali Divi, who owns Divis Labs - his salary of $5.3 million was 1.2% of his company's revenues.
India
Annual pay (in $)
Salary as share of company revenue
Kavery Kalanithi, Kalanithi Maran, Sun Network
$18 million
5%
Vishal Sikka, Infosys
$7.2 million
0.08%
Pawan Kant Munjal, Hero MotoCorp
$6.6 million
0.2%
Kumar Mangalam Birla, ABG
$6.6 million
0.02%
Sunil Kant Munjal, Hero MotoCorp
$6.3 million
0.2%
Onkar S Kanwar, Apollo Tyres
$6.2 million
0.3%
D B Gupta, Lupin
$5.6 million
0.3%
Murali K Divi, Divis Labs
$5.3 million
1.2%
N Chandrasekaran, TCS
$5.3 million
0.03%
Sajjan Jindal, JSW Steel
$5.2 million
0.1%
Compared to top-paid global CEOs, these payouts are pretty modest. However, looking at global CEO pay as % of company revenue, most shares remain below 1% except for some odd exceptions - the real estate company NorthStar Realty has been reporting losses, but its CEO pulls in $60 million in annual pay, 3.3% of company revenue. And GoPro's recent collapse in income means that its CEO pay is now 7.7% of its revenues, not a great sign.
International
Annual pay (in $)
Salary as share of company revenue
David M. Zaslav , Discovery Comms
$156 million
2.4%
Michael T. Fries, Liberty Global
$111 million
0.6%
Satya Nadella, Microsoft
$84 million
0.1%
Nicholas Woodman, GoPro
$77 million
7.7%
Gregory B. Maffei, Liberty Media
$73 million
1.6%
Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle
$67 million
0.8%
Steven M. Mollenkopf, Qualcomm
$60 million
0.2%
David T. Hamamoto, NorthStar Realty
$60 million
3.3%
Leslie Moonves, CBS
$54 million
0.4%
Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom
$44 million
0.3%
