Hindustan Unilever CMD Sanjiv Mehta's gross salary up 2.86% in FY20

Hindustan Unilever’s (HUL’s) Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Sanjiv Mehta (pictured) took home a larger pay cheque for the 2019-20 financial year even as the company was fighting Covid-19 challenges during the period.
 

HUL’s FY20 annual report, released on Friday, shows that Mehta’s gross salary or total remuneration was Rs 19.42 crore, up 2.86 per cent from a year earlier. In FY19, Mehta had taken home a remuneration of Rs 18.88 crore, which was lower by 2.52 per cent over the previous year.
 

While his FY20 salary and allowances, bonus, and provident fund contribution have grown by 41.59 per cent, 21.24 per cent and 4.65 per cent, respectively, from a year ago, perquisites have nearly halved to Rs 3.2 crore from Rs 6.92 crore the previous year. In FY19, Mehta's bonus had halved versus the year-ago period.

HR experts say performance-linked bonus and perks for a firm’s top executives are decided by its board of directors and is based on achievement of certain performance parameters.
 

HUL closed FY20 with sales of Rs 38,273 crore and a profit of Rs 6,738 crore, growth of 1.62 per cent and 11.63 per cent each from a year ago. The median remuneration of HUL’s employees increased by 4.26 per cent only in FY20 and Mehta’s paycheque was 151 times the median remuneration of employees for the year.

Mehta said, in his address to shareholders in the annual report, that the company saw disparate trends within the domestic fast-moving consumer goods, which had impacted its business.
 

There was a significant shift, Mehta said, in discretionary spends due to Covid-19 and this had hit the beauty and personal care division. “Despite the challenges, categories such as skin, hair and oral care delivered good growth and Dove and Pears led the premiumisation agenda in skin cleansing,” he said.
 

HUL’s on-shelf availability, Mehta said, was also at an all-time high with the customer case fill on time at over 95 per cent during the year.