CEOs even more overpaid than we thought
Officially, the 10 highest-paid CEOs of Australia’s largest 100 companies were paid a combined total of $99.63 million in 2014. But new data show that this figure significantly understates reality.
Research conducted by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) has found that the top 10 CEOs made a combined total of $171.4 million last year.
Not only are CEOs more overpaid than we thought, they are doing their utmost to hide how overpaid they really are.
The council’s annual survey of ASX 200 CEO remuneration notes: “For CEOs in the ASX100, average realised pay in 2014 was $5.63 million, compared to average reported pay of $5.01m”. Most of the undisclosed pay comes from stock options.
Best at hiding their wealth is Chris Rex of Ramsey’s Health Care. In 2014, his actual pay was $30.8 million, compared to the $9.1million that was reported.
Not far behind is Louis Gries of James Hardie. While the company’s annual report said he received $12.6 million, the actual figure was $20.8 million.
It’s a bit surprising that James Hardie only managed to come second in the cover-up stakes. They’ve had a lot of experience. For decades the company denied that asbestos was dangerous and continued to produce it despite knowing its harmful effects. More recently, the regulatory body ASIC fined James Hardie executives who had lied about the amount of money that would be required to compensate asbestos victims.
The latest findings by ACSI also show that gap between CEO pay and the average wage is about the same as it was in 2007, a mere 94 times the average wage.
