Wipro's CEO TK Kurien
As CMD of Wipro Ltd, whose main area of business is information technology, but is also present in certain consumer goods businesses, Premji's annual remuneration declined from 2.8 crore in the fiscal 2010-11 to 1.9 crore in the latest fiscal ended March 31, 2012. During the same period, the total remuneration rose from 80 lakh to 4.5 crore for Kurien, who assumed the role ofWipro's IT business CEO in February 2011.
However, the salaries paid to Kurien's predecessors - Suresh Vaswani and Girish S Paranjape, who were joint CEOs of Wipro's IT business till January 2011 - were much higher. During 2010-11, Vaswani was paid 10.2 crore (up from 3.1 crore in the previous year), while Paranjape's remuneration stood at 8.9 crore that year (up from 2 crore in 2009-10).
Along with Premji, Wipro's chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty also saw his pay package take a dip in the fiscal 2011-12, shows the company's latest annual report being sent to the shareholders ahead of their AGM later this month. Senapaty's remuneration fell to 1.8 crore in 2011-12, from 4.3 crore in the previous fiscal.
The total remuneration paid to all the key management personnel of the company fell to 8.7 crore in 2011-12, from 27.5 crore in the previous year. However, Wipro's total employee wage bill, including salaries, bonuses and other staff payments, rose to 15,400 crore from 12,700 crore.
Premji's remuneration had fallen even more sharply in 2010-11, as his pay package had dipped by nearly two-third from 8.1 crore in the year 2009-10.
Azim Premji's son Rishad Premji, currently the chief strategy officer of IT business, was paid 50 lakh in 2010-11 (up from 40 lakh in the previous year), but the annual report for 2011-12 does not mention his salary for the year.
As per the annual report, Rishad holds about 6.87 lakh Wipro shares (worth about 28 crore currently, while Azim Premji holds more than 9.3 crore shares (worth 3,700 crore) in his name.Azim Premji's pay package in 2011-12 included 30 lakh as salary, 13.1 lakh in allowances, about 1.1 crore as commissions/incentives, nearly 16 lakh as other annual compensation and 26 lakh in deferred benefits.
Wipro said that "the remuneration paid to chairman and managing director and other executive directors is determined keeping in view the industry benchmark, the relative performance of the company to the industry performance, and macro economic review on remuneration packages of CEOs of other organisations."
