While it was earlier reported that Tech Mahindra was set to lay off over 1,500 employees for poor performance and had even suspended the appraisal of numerous employees, the slowdown that has been affecting many companies does not seem to be having any impact on the IT giant's CEO CP Gurnani, at least in terms of his paycheck.
India's fifth largest IT services provider's MD and CEO Gurnani earned Rs 150.7 crore, including the value of stock option that was granted to him, in FY2017, reported Business Today. This figure is said to be more than the entire board of Wipro, Infosys and TCS.
Gurnani received quite a huge hike in his package, excluding the stock options, this year. While his pay was Rs 2.37 crore in FY2016, he took home Rs 3.65 crore this year, which is a 54 percent jump. He took home Rs 45.3 crore – including stock options – in FY2016.
Meanwhile, N Chandrasekaran, who was the CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) until February this year, earned Rs 30 crore in 2016-17, around 83 percent (Rs 25 crore) of which was a commission, according to the 2017 annual report of the company. The rest came in the form of basic salary (Rs 2.4 crore) and perquisites (Rs 2.7 crore), the Economic Times reported.
Chandrasekaran took home Rs 36 crore in 2015-16 and the amount had created quite a row during the company's annual general meeting last year with shareholders claiming that the figure was almost 460 times the average salary paid by the firm.
However, Wipro chairman Azim Premji's salary took quite a nosedive this year. He took home a package of $121,853 (about Rs 79 lakh) in FY2017, about 63 percent lesser than the $3,27,993 (about Rs 2.17 crore) he earned in the previous fiscal. The drop could be due to the chairman not being paid commission.
Premji's package comprises $66,464 in salary and allowances and $41,742 (others) and $13,647 in long-term compensation, which brings the total to $121,853 for FY2017, as per documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Amid the economic slowdown and layoffs that have of late made news, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy believes that senior executives should take salary cuts so that job losses are minimised.
"We have gone through these troughs in business several times, there is no need for us to become extremely anxious. It is possible to protect jobs of youngsters if seniors make minor adjustments, like senior people taking salary cuts based on disposable income," he said in an interview with ET Now. Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka too took a huge salary cut of about 67 percent in FY 2017.
