Infosys cuts CEO Salil Parekh's total salary by 21 per cent, here is how much he earned

By Divyanshi SharmaIndian IT tech company Infosys made headlines earlier this year for firing freshers after they couldn’t clear an internal test. The company, like many other tech giants, has been in cost-cutting mode for quite some time and even slashed the average variable pay of its employees. The CEO of the company, Salil Parekh, also got a reduction in his total salary for the financial year 2022-23, a report reveals.

Infosys CEO salary cut

According to a report in Business Today, Infoys CEO Salil Parekh got a reduction of 21 per cent in his annual salary last year. He earned Rs 56.44 crore in the financial year 2022-23, which is less when compared to the previous year. In the financial year 2021-22, Parekh got a total salary of Rs 71 crore. The same was revealed in the company’s annual report.

Parekh’s total salary includes a base salary of Rs 6.67 crore, performance-linked bonus of Rs 18.73 crore, 9.71 crore stock awards and 45 lakh other benefits.

The Business Today report further adds that the fall in the CEO’s total salary was due to varied factors like lower stock option exercises as well as a change in Infosys’ bonus plan. Earlier, Parekh’s total salary included Rs 52.33 crore worth of stock options, which were not exercised in the year gone by. Also, Infosys made its bonus plan more performance-based, which meant a lower bonus for the CEO.

While the CEO got a salary cut of Rs 21 per cent, he still made much higher in the year than an average employee. The average Infosys employee’s total salary is Rs 10.3 lakh in 2022-23.

Infosys cuts employees’ variable pay

Earlier, it was reported that Infosys slashed the average variable pay of its employees by 40 per cent for the quarter that ended on March 2023. This meant that Infosys employees, on average, would be getting 60 per cent of their promised variable pay.

A Moneycontrol report stated that the company, in an email to employees, said that even though the financial year 2022-2023 had a strong performance overall, the last quarter was ‘impacted’ by a ‘volatile market and unforeseen events’.

“While FY23 was a year of strong performance overall, the quarter that went by was impacted by a volatile market and unforeseen events,” the email read.

The email also stated the employees need to stay alert about the changes in the market and ‘must see the current climate as an opportunity to rally as a group and remain committed to navigating the changing business landscape’. Further, Infosys told its employees that they, as an organisation, have always been ‘resilient’ and have responded to market disruptions effectively while striving to move ahead.