Do you want to know the salary of the richest Indian, Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani? Yes, it is revealed that for the fifth consecutive year, the chairman and managing director of his firm, Reliance Industries (RIL), has not given himself a salary raise. Mukesh Ambani wants to place an example in front of the businessmen from his league by keeping his salary at constant Rs. 15 crore, while he is presently entitled to receive Rs. 38.93 crore as per the approval of shareholders. This is all revealed by the annual report for the year 2012-13 that RIL has recently presented.
Ambani told the media that it is his desire to set a personal example with regards to moderation in the levels of managerial compensation. Since 2007 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed a gathering of business leaders and raised the topic of capping CEO salaries, the top management’s paychecks came under the media scanner. That’s the reason Ambani’s foregoing of such a huge amount has received special media attention. He had put a cap this salary cap during the financial year 2008-09.
The breakup of Mukesh Ambani’s current compensation includes a base salary of Rs. 4.16 crore, perks and allowances of Rs. 60 lakh, retiral benefits of Rs. 89 lakh, and commission of Rs. 9.35 crore. Even the other key employees in top management of RIL have received an unchanged salary during the year 2012-13. RIL has paid a substantially raised overall amount of Rs. 5,179 crore in 2012-13 to its staff; in the preceding year, this amount was Rs. 3,955 crore. These figures are quite comparative as we consider the fact that the number of employees during the year has hardly increased.
We can observe some good positive changes over the last few days as the long-running feud between Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, seems to be getting sorted. Recently, Mukesh went into a business tie-up with Anil, and both are also scheduled to mutually deal in the telecom sector soon. Both the brothers have been involved in a range of businesses their late father Dhirubhai Ambani started and expanded. Since the last three years, Mukesh and Anil were involved in a competitive business relationship, but things seem to have eased out now.
Mukesh Ambani, who is a graduate in chemical engineering, had joined his father in business while he was pursuing an MBA from Stanford University. He has always believed in leading by example and this is what can again be observed by his salary capping. It is not solely about himself, but he has also kept the company’s top management in consent with his idea of keeping their compensations under stringent checks and showing it to the world. Now, how would you rate the performance of this top business leader of the country?
