Hero MotoCorp's Pawan Munjal is highest paid director

All the top 10 directors were paid remuneration in excess of Rs 19 crore.

Hero MotoCorp's promoter Pawan Munjal emerged as the highest paid director among the top listed private companies, taking home a pay packet of nearly Rs 44 crore (Rs 440 million) last fiscal, followed by two other executives of the auto group, says a report.

The group's two other promoters - late Brijmohan Lall Munjal and Sunil Kant Munjal - were the second and third most paid directors during 2014-15 period, according to proxy advisory firm InGovern.

Brijmohan Lall, who passed away earlier this month, had a pay packet of Rs 43.64 crore (Rs 436.4 million), while that of Sunil Kant Munjal stood at Rs 41.87 crore (Rs 418.7 billion).

Desh Bandhu Gupta, chairman of Lupin, earned a salary of Rs 37.58 crore, while Larsen & Toubro chairman A M Naik drew an annual remuneration of Rs 27.32 crore (Rs 273.2 million).

An analysis of the salary of 95 directors in Nifty companies shows that on an average remuneration of a director is Rs 9 crore (Rs 90 million).

All the top 10 directors were paid remuneration in excess of Rs 19 crore (Rs 190 million).

According to the report, Pawan Munjal took home a pay packet of Rs 43.91 crore (Rs 439.1 million) last fiscal, which is 1.84 per cent of his company's net profit.

A total of 34 Nifty-50 companies disclosed pay-ratios, while three firms - Bajaj Auto, Bosch and Maruti Suzuki - shied away from making any such disclosures. The Index has 10 PSUs which are exempted from making such disclosures.

Notably, the top three highest paid directors are from Hero MotoCorp and Lupin also contributed two directors to the top-10 list.

Interestingly, seven out of these 10 directors are promoters of their respective companies.

Among others in the top 10 are Bharti Airtel's Sunil Bharti Mittal (Rs 27.18 crore), Vinita Gupta, CEO of Lupin (Rs 24.86 crore), Hindalco MD D Bhattacharya (Rs 21.59 crore), TCS MD N Chandrasekaran (Rs 21.28 crore) and Ultratech Cement's Kumar Mangalam Birla (Rs 19.04 crore).

As per the report, as many as eight directors were paid remuneration that was more than one per cent of the standalone net profits of their companies with the highest being 2.33 per cent awarded to Bhattacharya.

On the other hand, pay package of 16 directors was less than 0.05 per cent of the net profits of their firms.

"Remuneration of 11 directors was more than 400 times the median employee remuneration of their companies. This included three directors each of Lupin and Hero MotoCorp and one each of Hindalco, L&T, Cipla, ITC and TCS", it said.

Besides, three executive directors earned less than Rs 1 crore (rs 10 million) in the last fiscal. M D Gupta of Lupin took home a salary of Rs 50 lakh; Sanjeev K Gupta, who was on the board of Axis Bank during the last fiscal, drew an annual remuneration of Rs 84 lakh and Sailesh T Desai of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries pocketed Rs 93 lakh.