Infosys CEO Salil Parekh's salary up 26% to $6.1 mn in FY 20

In sharp contrast to its peer Tata Consultancy Services, information technology services (IT) firm Infosys has given over 25% raise to most of its top management despite the company expecting revenue and profit loss during the financial year, according to disclosures made to US markets regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

The Bengaluru-based IT major's CEO and managing director Salil Parikh has seen his salary rise to $6.1 million in the financial year ending March 2020, a 27% rise over the $4.84 million remunerations he got in the previous financial year.

Infosys senior executives, including COO UB Pravin Rao, presidents Mohit Joshi and Ravi Kumar S have all received more than 25% rise in compensation even as the company deferred promotions and increments for its employees. 

The package includes salary, bonus and incentives, long-term benefits and dollar value of restricted stock units.  

This comes shortly after TCS management announced its top team is taking a pay cut. CEO Rajesh Gopinathan and COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam took 16 and 13% lower salary in FY 2019-2020 than they did during FY 2018-19 citing the economic conditions impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

COO Rao, an Infosys veteran, took home $2.3 million as compensation as compared with $1.8, a growth of 28%.

The compensation is for the previous financial year for which Infosys reported a reported an 8% growth during the full financial year ending March 2020, which is higher than what its larger rivals TCS and Cognizant reported during the same period.

President Kumar, who is also the deputy COO and the head of delivery, saw his remuneration rise by 25% to $3 million during FY 20, as compared with the $2.4 million he drew as compensation in FY 19. Kumar is based in New York and hence his salary is not comparable to the executives based in India.

Joshi, who has been with Infosys for two decades and heads the banking, financial sector and insurance vertical, took a compensation of $3.3 million for FY 20 as compared with $2.6 million remuneration that was paid to him in FY 19, a growth of 27%. BFSI is the most important vertical and contributes around 33% revenue for the IT industry.

The $190 billion IT industry is going through a tough financial year and will likely see a decline in revenues for the first time ever.