Indian CEOs in fiscal 2022 received a compensation of Rs 11.2 crore, on average, with a median salary of Rs 7.4 crore. It is the highest in the three years, reported the Economic Times.
According to the 2022 Deloitte India Executive Remuneration Survey, the average remuneration of CEOs in FY21 stood at Rs 9.4 crore (Rs 6.4 crore median), and in the prior year, in FY20, on an average, CEOs received Rs 9.8 crore (Rs 6.9 crore median) in salary, the report said.
Both — promoter CEO salaries and professional CEO salaries are included in this remuneration average. Long-term Incentives (LTIs) are also taken into account.
According to the poll, which surveyed over 470 companies in the IT, ITeS, services, manufacturing, consumer goods, medical sciences, and financial services sectors, the average pay for professional CEOs in FY22 was Rs 10 crore, with a median of Rs 7.4 crore.
“Limited and highly sought-after talent pool, the talent that is highly fungible within and even across sectors, and continued gap to global pay levels contribute to the increase in executive pay,” said Deloitte partner Anubhav Gupta, quoted ET.
On the lines of the total cost to companies, that already count LTIs, India Inc gave their CEOs salaries 2.7 times exceeding the pay of chief financial officers, 3.7 times more than business unit heads, and 4.1 times what chief human resource officers and heads of sales earn, the survey said.
The survey also found that the average compensation of CEOs was 2.4 times what chief operating officers (COO) earned. The average salary of chief experience officers (CXO) did not see much of a change over the last three years.
Nearly 84 percent of short-term incentives (STIs) of CEOs rely on company performance, while for CXOs, STIs depending factor was 50 percent, the survey stated. The survey observed that 80 percent of firms would rather have a target-based approach for determining STIs.
Gupta told ET that for LTIs, stock options remain the most preferred choice, with about 54 percent of companies using them.