There was a big drop in the proportion of chief executives who got a pay rise over the past year, as Australian companies paid heed to the reputational risk of giving their executives and directors salary and fee increases during the pandemic.
According to the Governance Institute of Australia’s 2021 Remuneration Report, only 25 per cent of Australian CEOs received increases in fixed remuneration over the past year, compared with 53 per cent in the previous year.
For those who did receive a pay rise, the increase was 1.4 per cent – down from 2 per cent the previous year.
There was a 10 per cent fall in the number of ASX300 executives receiving some form of short-term incentive over the period – a fall from 74 per cent to 64 per cent.
Twenty-one per cent of companies gave their non-executive directors a pay rise over the past year, compared with 28 per cent the previous year.
For boards that did increase director fees, the median increase was 5 per cent for the chair and 4 per cent for directors.
The median total fee pool for directors on boards of financial services companies in the ASX100 was $3.5 million – the highest of any industry sector.
The report was prepared for the Governance Institute by Aon, which surveyed 413 companies, including 283 ASX300 companies. The data is a combination of survey responses and disclosures from 2019/20 annual reports.