Cognizant CEO gets over $10-mn pay package

Offshore-centric IT services major Cognizant has paid its India-origin CEO Francisco D'Souza a pay package of $10.6 million in cash, stocks and other benefits.

The US-listed company, which has a large portion of its 163,000 workforce in India, paid D'Souza a base salary of $590,000, stock awards worth $9.6 million and a non-equity incentive plan compensation of $405,780 for the last year. However, his $10.6 million package for 2012 was lower than $11.7 million paid to him in 2011 when 44-year old D'Souza had got stock awards of over $10 million.

D'Souza is credited with expanding Cognizant's annual revenue from $1.4 billion to over $7 billion in the last six years and has led the company to deliver industry-leading growth in a tough business environment.
 

Despite a decline from the last year's level, D'Souza's $10.61 million pay package is the highest among all the top executives of the company.

Cognizant President Gordon J Coburn received $6.23 million, while others with significant pay packages included Rajeev Mehta ($5.19 million), Ramakrishnan Chandrasekaran ($3.62 million), Karen McLoughlin ($ 2.5 million) and Malcolm Frank ($2.49 million).

D'Souza, an MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University, was appointed Cognizant CEO and became a member of its Board with effect from January 1, 2007.