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Belen Garijo: The future head of the Dax-listed pharmaceutical company Merck is one of the top managers in Germany
Photo: Bernd Hartung
The management levels of large German companies are still male dominated.
The consulting and auditing company EY annually examines what the pay of top managers looks like - and unearthed astonishing things: For the first time, female board members were paid better than their male colleagues in all stock market indices of the Dax family, which list the largest German companies.
EY expert Jens Massmann cited the growing efforts of companies to win women over to their top management board as an important reason.
Since candidates are scarce, their market value increases and with it their salaries.
In the top stock market league of the 30 DAX companies, women on the board of directors earned an average of around 2.93 million euros last year, which is an average of around 30,000 euros more than top male managers.
Women are reportedly paid better there for four years.
The proportion of women in the executive suite is falling again
In the 60 companies in the MDax, the next largest company after the Dax 30 in terms of market capitalization and order book turnover, the salary of the top managers was 1.44 million euros, on average around 115,000 euros higher.
In the SDax, which shows the 70 companies following the MDax, women were considerably ahead for the first time since the study began in 2013.
Their average total direct remuneration was around EUR 1.07 million, around seven percent higher than that of the male board members.
However, the proportion of women in the top floors is falling again for the first time: As of September 1, 2020, there were only 23 female managers on the board of the 30 Dax companies, according to a study by the non-profit AllBright Foundation.
A year ago it was 29.
The proportion of female executives on the Executive Board fell from 14.7 to 12.8 percent.
According to EY, the MDax is seven percent and the SDax five percent.
It is very different with the CEOs
The CEOs, almost entirely male in all indices, were not included in the comparison - they are viewed as a separate category.
However, their sometimes very high salaries would change the ratio significantly if they were included in the calculation.
You can't really compare men and women at DAX CEOs - because there is simply not a single woman at the top of the largest corporations in Germany.
Belen Garijo will only take over as the first sole boss of a DAX group, the pharmaceutical company Merck, in spring 2021.
Before that, a woman had been at the top of the software giant SAP with Jennifer Morgan, but together with a male colleague;
Morgan hadn't been able to last a year there, however.
According to a study by the German Association for the Protection of Securities (DSW) in cooperation with the Technical University of Munich, VW boss Herbert Diess (61) with 9.9 million euros was the top earner among the incumbent Dax bosses.
It was followed by Merck boss Stefan Oschmann (62) with 8.5 million and Siemens boss Joe Kaeser (63) with 7.2 million.
Overall, according to EY, the salaries of board members fell in 2019 for the second year in a row.
It fell across all companies in the Dax family by an average of 4.6 percent to around 1.99 million euros.
"The difficult economic situation last year - even before the corona pandemic - led to significant wages for top managers," explained EY expert Massmann.
In 2018 there had already been a decrease of 0.5 percent.
For 2020, Massmann expects the remuneration to fall further due to Corona.
While the female board members were able to resist the downward trend in 2018, their remuneration fell by 5.9 percent in the following year, more than that of the men (minus 3 percent).
The total direct remuneration consists of the base salary, annual bonuses and long-term components that were granted in the year.
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mh / dpa