Chief executive officers in the United States are paid as much as 10 times more than their Indian counterparts, according to a Bloomberg’s Global CEO Pay-to-Average Income ratio. CEOs in the United States as well as in India earn far more than the average worker.
CEOs of companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange earn 229 times more than the average worker in India, according to another analysis by Bloomberg. The gap is the second largest, after the United States, where the ratio is 265.
Despite the similar pay scale ratio between CEOs and average workers in the United States and India, the CEO in the western nation make on an average $14.25 million per annum while the Indian CEO makes around $1.46 million, according to Bloomberg analysis that used benchmark stock indexes in 22 nations.
For instance, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook received $9.33 million incentive pay for the year ended Sept. 30, $3.06 million in salary and an equity award of $89.2 million — bringing his total payout for the year to about $102 million.
Meanwhile, the highest paid Indian CEO earned $24 million in FY2017. Tech Mahindra’s CP Gurnani earned $438,200 in salary while the rest was stock options.
“Regardless of how it’s measured, CEO pay continues to be very, very high and has grown far faster in recent decades than typical worker pay,” Economic Policy Institute (EPI) researchers Lawrence Mishel and Jessica Schieder wrote in their report in July 2017. “Exorbitant CEO pay means that the fruits of economic growth are not going to ordinary workers since the higher CEO pay does not reflect correspondingly higher output.”
While the average CEO Pay-to-Average ratio has steadily reduced from 299-to-1 in 2014 and 286-to-1 in 2015 to 265 in 2017, it is much higher than the 20-to-1 ratio in 1965 and the 59-to-1 ratio in 1989, the EPI report said.
The CEO Pay-to-Average ratio in China is 127, with CEOs in the country earning an average of $1.87 million per annum. Norway and Austria were shown to have among the smallest gaps. CEOs of firms in the Norwegian OBX index earned on average $1.28 million, with a pay ratio of 20.
The analysis took into account pay disclosed in public filings, including salary, bonuses, perquisites and non-cash pay such as equity awards, deferred-compensation programs and pensions.