As the global economic downturn takes its toll on pay packets, Indian IT major Wipro's chief Azim Premji seems to be leading by example as he has taken a cut of about 10 per cent in his annual compensation.
The total remuneration paid to Premji dipped by USD 32,414 (about Rs 14 lakh) in the fiscal year 2008-09 to USD 2,96,142 (about Rs 1.37 crore).
India's third largest IT exporter, listed at New York Stock Exchange, had paid a total remuneration of USD 3,28,556 to its chairman in the previous fiscal.
However, the company has paid higher remuneration to many of its other executive directors and senior management personnel in 2008-09, according to its annual report filing with the US market regulator SEC. The compensation paid to the non-executive directors also increased.
For its non-employee directors, Wipro said, the attendance fee was raised to Rs 20,000 per meeting with effect from August 1, 2008, from Rs 10,000 previously. Besides, the company paid a total of Rs 1.46 crore as commission to them in 2008-09, up from about Rs 86.02 lakh in the previous year.
The pay package for executive directors like Suresh Senapaty, Pratik Kumar, Suresh Vaswani and Girish S Paranjape also rose in 2008-09.
Another Indian IT firm Infosys' top brass, including its directors and senior-most management personnel, also got a collective hike of over Rs 10 crore in their pay packets during last fiscal.
The collective remuneration of all the board members and top management personnel rose by Rs 10.28 crore to Rs 29.16 crore in the fiscal 2008-08, as per the auditors' report to Infosys board on the consolidated financial statements of the company and its subsidiaries.
A number of companies in the country, particularly from the IT space, have either cut down or frozen the salaries of their employees, as their bottom lines and revenue have been hit hard by the global economic downturn.
According to Wipro's SEC filing, Premji was paid USD 84,729 as salary and allowances in 2008-09, down from USD 107,701 in the previous fiscal. Besides, he also got a lower amount of USD 105,710 as commission/incentives in the latest fiscal, compared to USD 127,621 in 2007-08. The other components of the pay package include housing perquisites, deferred long-term compensation and other benefits.
Wipro's chief financial office Suresh Senapaty, however, got a total payout of USD 408,246 in 2008-09, up from USD 317,751 in 2007-08. Similarly, the package of Pratik Kumar, executive vice-president (HR) rose from USD 230,507 to USD 290,201.
Suresh Vaswani's package also rose to USD 420,607 from USD 315,013, while that of Girish Paranjape increased from USD 292,324 to USD 398,652. Both Vaswani and Paranjape are Joint CEOs of IT Business.
However, the remuneration for Vineet Agrawal, president, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, fell to USD 281,081 from USD 304,915 in 2007-08.
