Notwithstanding statements by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and some business leaders such as Infosys chief mentor NR Narayana Murthy about excessive executive compensation, India Inc’s top guns have given themselves a handsome pay raise. The compensation of the top 25 highest-paid corporate executives of public-listed firms has risen by 69% in FY08, more than the 54% profit growth witnessed by their companies.

The ETIG analysis, based on data from Capitaline and Prowess, took into account corporate directors of all listed firms for whom data are available. This excludes some firms who are yet to come up with their annual reports, which contain details of management remuneration. Incidentally, three directors of two-wheeler major Hero Honda earned around Rs 13 crore each during FY07 and when their remuneration data become public, they are likely to figure among the top paid corporate execs for FY08 as well.

The club of top 25 highest-paid directors, includes just two professional CEOs — AM Naik of L&T and Amar Lulla of Cipla — with the rest being promoters themselves. These top notch corporate execs took home Rs 410 crore or more than $100 million together (given the dollar-rupee exchange rate last year).

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani continues to lead the overall charts and has emerged as the first local CEO to cross the mark of $10 million (Rs 44 crore) pay cheque from a single company in a year. Brother Anil Ambani, who got a hefty hike from Reliance Communications last year, figures at the number two spot so far. He took home around Rs 43.43 crore as remuneration from five listed firms and his biggest pay cheque came from RCom, which gave Rs 30.03 crore last year, including Rs 30 crore as commission paid by companies out of their net profits.

If Anil Ambani’s compensation from one single company is considered, he would be pegged at number five spot in the CEO salary rankings, behind Mukesh Ambani, Kalanithi and Kavery Maran of Sun TV and PRR Rajha of Madras Cement. The highest paid husband-wife duo appear to be the Marans of media firm Sun TV, who pocketed Rs 32.4 crore each, or a staggering Rs 64.8 crore together last year.

Some names which could figure in the final top 10 list include that of Kumar Mangalam Birla. His remuneration from some of the key group firms is yet to be made public and if added, he could be sixth-highest corporate executive among the listed firms. There have been very sharp increases in compensation in few cases. For instance, Anil Ambani’s annual compensation figure has risen from Rs 2.4 crore in FY07 to Rs 43.43 crore in FY08. Similarly, Ranbaxy CEO Malvinder Singh’s compensation has increased from Rs 5.08 crore to Rs 19.58 crore. Of course, some or even a substantial part of their hikes could be because of increase in the profit of their companies.

While some firms are yet to file their annual reports, ETIG estimates that close to 600 corporate directors earned more than Rs 1 crore, after factoring in the data for FY07. Two years ago, there were around 400 corporate directors in listed firms who had crore-plus pay packets, i.e., a 50% jump in the number of crore-plus pay packets over the last two years.

During FY08, there were around hundred directors who were in the $1 million (Rs 4 crore) plus pay bracket as against just 30 of them during FY06. The actual number of corporate honchos earning million dollar pay packets could be much higher, given that a number of private sector firms — including the wholly-owned arms of multinationals, especially financial firms, offer multi-crore pay packets to their top executives. The top 10 most highly-paid execs all earned more than $3.5 million in total pay packet, including salary, sitting fees as directors besides commissions and other compensation heads.