In Germany's top corporations, the pay gap is still huge.
In an international comparison, German board members are still modest.
Frankfurt / Main - Despite short-time working and wage cuts during the Corona * period, salaries at the top of top German corporations are still being paid that are many times higher than the average income of employees.
Employees of the Dax * companies received an average of 48 times less salary than the board members last year.
This is the result of a study by the German Association for Protection of Securities Holdings (DSW) and the Technical University of Munich.
Dax: Management board salaries were 52 times as much three years ago
However, the gap became a little smaller in 2020, as can be seen from the calculations presented on Tuesday: In 2019, board members earned 49 times as much as their employees in the German share index, and in 2018 it was even 52 times.
On average, a board member in the Dax - including the CEOs - according to the study, received total remuneration of a good 3.4 million euros last year.
That was 3.3 percent less than a year earlier.
"Decisive for the decline in executive board salaries was the profit development of the DAX companies," explained the Munich scientist Gunther Friedl in Frankfurt.
“In the Corona year 2020, operating profits before interest and taxes fell by more than 25 percent.
As a result, the bonuses also fell, namely by a significant 18.9 percent. ”At the same time, however, the fixed remuneration increased by 1.2 percent compared to the previous year.
Dax: CEOs earn up to 14 million a year
According to the calculation, the CEOs of the DAX companies received an average of around 5.4 million euros for the 2020 financial year, about 76 times the average salary.
The top earner is Stephen Angel from Linde (a good 14 million euros), followed by Christian Klein from SAP (8.4 million euros) and Volkswagen * driver Herbert Diess * (7.9 million euros).
At the bottom of the Dax 30 ranking is MTU boss Reiner Winkler with a total remuneration of almost 1.9 million euros.
This includes the fixed salary as well as short-term and long-term variable remuneration.
There are numerous studies on the remuneration of the Executive Board, the results of which differ significantly due to different calculation methods.
DAX board members: Here women earn better than men
Women are rarely represented on the DAX executive boards with less than 18 percent, but earn an average of 3.4 million euros more than their male colleagues with 2.9 million euros.
If you look at the entire board, according to DSW in the Dax, the software company SAP pays the best with an average of 7.4 million euros.
If you include pensions and one-off payments, the automaker VW stands out with particularly high sums.
"Board members with a million-dollar salary can and should take care of their retirement provisions themselves," demanded DSW General Manager Marc Tüngler.
"Pension commitments and entitlements belong in the moth box."
In an international comparison, the sums published by the DSW appear modest, at least in individual cases: According to the analysis, the head of the French software company Dassault Systèmes, Bernard Charlès, stands out in Europe with around 20.5 million euros.
In the USA, Nike boss John Donahoe even comes to around 46.8 million euros.
USA: Annual salaries in excess of a billion dollars
The differences are far greater when newcomers are also taken into account in addition to the established companies, as the consulting firm Equilar did on behalf of the “New York Times”.
The 200 highest-paid US company bosses earned 274 times as much as their employees, a further increase from 245 times in 2019.
Stock options and other incentives were also taken into account here, so that eight US CEOs alone exceeded the limit of $ 100 million in annual salaries. Lonely at the top will be the head of the software company Palantir, Alexander Karp, with 1.1 billion dollars in 2020. With 40 million dollars, it was enough for the highest-paid woman, Lisa Su from the chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, only to place 40 in the ranking.
(dpa) * Merkur.de is part of IPPEN.DIGITAL.