Premji takes pay cut, but hike for Wipro brass

The senior management of leading IT services firm Wipro seems to be unaffected by the global slowdown.

In its recent filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), India's third-largest software company stated that all its senior management team — including CFO Suresh Senapaty, HR Head Pratik Kumar and Joint CEOs for IT business Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe — took hefty hikes in their salaries for the financial year 2008-09.

However, Wipro's chairman Azim Premji took a 10 per cent drop in his annual compensation in FY09 when compared with the previous fiscal.

In the financial year ended March 31, 2009, Premji — who holds nearly 80 per cent stake in the company — received a total compensation of $296,142 (about Rs 1.37 crore), which is $32,414 less than what he was given in the previous fiscal. In 2007-08, Premji was paid a total remuneration of $328,556, the company stated in its annual filings with the SEC.

It also said Premji was paid $84,729 towards salary and allowances in 2008-09, down from $107,701 in the previous fiscal. He also received a lower amount of $105,710 as commission and incentives in the latest fiscal, compared with $127,621 in 2007-08. However, other members of the company's top brass were given a hefty hike during FY09.

Wipro CFO Senapaty was given a total annual compensation of $408,246, up from $317,751 in 2007-08. Executive Vice-President (HR) Pratik Kumar's total remuneration during FY09 increased to $290,201 from $230,507 earlier.

The pay packet of Joint CEO for IT business Vaswani went up to $420,607 from $315,013, while that of his counterpart Paranjape increased to $398,652 from $292,324.

However, the annual compensation of Vineet Agrawal, who is now heading the consumer care and lighting business of the company, dropped to $281,081 in 2008-09 from $304,915 a year back.

Wipro also increased the attendance fee paid to its non-employee directors to Rs 20,000 per meeting from Rs 10,000.