Bourses pay crores to chiefs, business take hit

It pays literally in crores to head the entities facilitating trading in stocks and commodities, although the economic downturn seems to have forced investors to fly away from the markets.
    
An analysis of remuneration paid to the business heads at various national stock and commodity exchanges in the country shows that most of them were paid crores of rupees in the last financial year and were mostly awarded a considerable increase in their compensation from the previous year.
    
However, with the economic downturn weighing down on the investors' sentiments, the business has taken a hit at stock exchanges, although the commodity bourses have managed to grow their turnover in non-agricultural products.
    
Leading the remuneration tally, National Stock Exchange (NSE) gave its managing director Ravi Narain a total payout of Rs 3.34 crore in 2007-08.
    
At the same time, the bourse's deputy managing director Chitra Ramakrishna was paid a remuneration of Rs 2.16 crore.
    
Not far behind, BSE paid a total remuneration of Rs 1.18 crore to its MD & CEO Rajnikant Patel in 2007-08, which more than doubled from about Rs 52.3 lakh in the previous year.
    
Patel had, however, resigned from BSE and in November 2008 joined as president-Exchange Business at Anil Ambani group firm Reliance Money, which has entered the commodity exchange business through a stake purchase in National Multi-Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (NMCE).

While his compensation at Reliance Money is not known yet, Patel's remuneration from BSE in 2007-08 was less than that of another director and company secretary at NSE, J Ravichandran, who was the third highest paid executive at the bourse during the year after its MD and deputy MD.
    
Ravichandran was paid total remuneration of about Rs 1.17 crore during the last fiscal 2007-08.
    
While the total remuneration for the country's second largest commodity exchange NCDEX's managing director during 2007-08 could not be ascertained, the payout in the last six months of the fiscal totalled Rs 72.5 lakh.
    
The largest commodity bourse MCX did not give any salary to its the then managing director Jignesh Shah in 2007-08, although he received a total of Rs 2.8 crore in commission linked to the company's profit.
    
Shah was named as vice chairman of MCX early this fiscal, while Joseph Massey, formerly deputy MD, became MD and CEO.
    
Massey got salary and allowances totalling Rs 95.21 lakh in the last financial year.
    
Shah, however, was paid a remuneration of Rs 3.44 crore in 2007-08 as chairman and MD of Financial Technologies, the promoter of MCX.
    
MCX's total managerial remuneration, including salaries, allowances, commissions, perquisites and other benefits, more than double to Rs 5.27 crore in 2007-08 from about Rs 2.02 crore in the previous fiscal.

The average daily turnover at Asia's oldest stock exchange and the country's largest in terms of listed companies, Bombay Stock Exchange, more than halved to about Rs 3,500 crore in January this year, from over Rs 8,000 crore a year ago.
    
Similarly, at NSE, the country's second largest stock exchange in terms of number of companies listed there, has seen its average daily turnover falling to close to Rs 9,500 crore from about Rs 19,500 crore in a year.
    
At commodity bourses, the total turnover till January this fiscal grew by over 31 per cent, but it was mostly due to a surge of about 81 per cent in bullion trading. The agricultural commodity turnover actually fell by about 32 per cent in the same period.