Chairman and Managing Director of the country’s biggest private sector entity Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Mukesh Ambani is setting an example for moderation in managerial compensation levels. He has kept his annual salary at Rs 15 crore , foregoing Rs 24 crore from the remuneration approved for him by shareholders.
Ambani has not deviated from this salary level since the fiscal year 2008-2009. In the recently published annual report the company said that, “The Chairman and Managing Director’s compensation has been set at Rs 15 crore as against Rs 38.93 crore that he is eligible as per the shareholder’s approval, reflecting his desire to continue to set a personal example for moderation in managerial compensation levels.”
Mukesh Ambani is eligible for a pay package of Rs 38.93 crore from the last fiscal year. His actual salary is 23.93 crore lesser than the pay package.
In the last fiscal year of 2011-2012, Ambani had foregone his salary by Rs 23.93 crore. He had decided to stagnant his salary at Rs 15 crore in Oct 2009. There was a debate on-going at that time that discussed the right-sizing of CEO salaries. He was the country’s top paid executive when he decided to cap his salary which dropped from Rs 44 crore to Rs 15 crore in the year 2008-2009.
His remuneration includes Rs 4.16 crore as base salary, Rs 60 lakh towards prerequisites and allowances, Rs 89 lakh as benefits and Rs 9.35 crore as commission.
Apart from this, RIL’s total payments towards the annual compensation for its top managerial positions for the year 2012-2013 also remained same at Rs 44 crore. This compensation was hiked from Rs 41 crore to Rs 44 crore in the preceding year. The top executives of RIL , namely Nikhil Meswani and Hital Meswani are paid 11 crore each. Other executives like PMS Prasad and P K Kapil will be given Rs 5 crore and Rs 2 crore as their annual remuneration for the current fiscal year.
Overall, the employee strength of RIL has increased in comparison to last year. So, the overall staff cost at consolidated level rose considerably to Rs 5,179 crore from Rs 3,955 crore in 2011-2012. The total number of employees rose from 23,166 to 23,519 in this current year. The company has recently hired 75 management graduates and 436 engineers from campus selection drives in the last fiscal and the numbers will rise in future.
Here, it has to be noted that RIL is coming up with its 4G services in India soon. The company will also expand its overall employee strength to take care of the future expansions in Reliance Retail and Reliance Jio Infocomm.