JSE directors' salaries up 23 percent

The salaries of executive directors of JSE heavyweights are rising continuously, while directors of smaller companies are seeing theirs shrink or remain constant.

Over the past year the salaries of executive directors at the Top 40 JSE companies have risen 23 percent and their short-term incentives 56 percent, Sake24 reported on Friday.

This is revealed in PwC's third report on the remuneration of executive directors, which was released on Thursday. The report examines the annual reports of 384 JSE companies published in the year to end-April.

Total remuneration of heads of companies with a small market capitalisation declined 6.7 percent, from R2.03m to R1.9m.

Gerald Seegers, tax director and head of human resource services at PwC South Africa, said this trend at small-cap companies was in line with international trends.

Directors' remuneration continually makes the headlines because the salaries paid to workers differ considerably from those of the directors, said Seegers. It has been reported that the difference in salaries between South African company heads and ordinary workers can be as much as 300 times.

This means that the highest paid worker earns 300 times more than the lowest paid worker.

Seegers said it is not only in South Africa that there is concern about the differences in earnings.

There is increasing pressure on companies to disclose the gap.