Women on DAX boards earn more than men

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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: Markus Scholz / dpa

Women on DAX boards earn more than men - this applies for the first time to the DAX as well as to the MDax and SDax: this is the result of an evaluation by the consulting and auditing company EY.

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.

In the 60 companies in the MDax, the salary of top managers was 1.44 million euros, on average around 115,000 euros higher.

According to the information, women were considerably ahead in the SDax for the first time since the study began in 2013.

Their average total direct remuneration was around EUR 1.07 million, around 7 percent higher than that of the male board members.

12 percent of the Dax board members are women

According to EY, a good 12 percent of all board members in the Dax in 2019 were female, in the MDax 7 percent and in the SDax 5 percent.

CEOs were not included in the comparison.

In 2019, there was only one woman on a Dax CEO position in the Dax 30 with SAP boss Jennifer Morgan.

Morgan has since left SAP.

In 2021 Belen Garijo will move to the CEO position of the pharmaceutical company Merck.

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 wage cuts among top managers," explained EY expert Massmann.

In 2018 there had already been a decrease of 0.5 percent.

For 2020, Massmann expects remuneration to fall further due to the 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.

la / dpa