South Africa's rich CEOs

South Africa’s PwC’s latest executive director’s remuneration report shows that the pay spectrum across the JSE, the median salary for executives has increased by 12% between 2014 and 2015 to R3.7 million, where CEOs saw the median salary jump by 10.7%, to R4.6 million, with the upper quartile seeing an 8% increase to R7.7 million.

In global markets, it is becoming increasingly more common for companies to cap bonus pay to 100% of an exec’s guaranteed salary – this is not in effect in South Africa.

http://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/130404/this-is-how-much-south-africas-top-ceos-get-in-bonus-pay/

CEOs making millions

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has noted with anger the report that in 2010 the median pay of executive directors of the top 40 JSE-listed companies increased by 23.3%, to R4.8 million.

The Naledi Research Paper on the Living Wage, presented to the COSATU Central Committee in June, spells out the reality. The top 10% of earners receive around 94 times more than the bottom 10%. The poorest 10% share R1.1 billion between them while the richest 10% share R381 billion, 51% of the total.

The inequality has a marked racial dimension. Whereas the African population accounts for 79.4% of the population and 76.8% of households, it only accounts for 41.2% of household income from work and social grants. In contrast the white population account for only 9.2% of the population and 12.8% of households yet receives 45.3% of household income, five times their proportion of the population.

Inequality is further aggravated by the fact that the poorest have to spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on basic essentials like food and clothing.