Recently, Toyota Motor submitted a "Securities Report", and the annual salary of President Toyota Akio was exposed.
As the world's second largest automobile group in market value after Tesla , Toyoda Akio 's salary in fiscal year 2021 (April 2021 ~ March 2022) reached 685 million yen (approximately RMB 34 million), a year-on-year increase of 55%, setting a record for the highest salary ever paid by a Toyota president. His above-mentioned compensation includes fixed salary of 204 million yen and compensation in the form of stocks of 481 million yen.
Although Akio Toyoda's annual salary can dwarf the heads of domestic car companies, compared with the CEOs of other European and American car companies, he can only lag behind. In the past year, Tesla CEO Musk's salary reached an astonishing figure of 23.5 billion U.S. dollars, approximately 157.5 billion yuan, which is 4,632 times that of Akio Toyoda and Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook 30 times.
With the vitality brought by the "new four modernizations", wealth creation myths in the automobile industry continue one after another, and executive compensation continues to refresh people's understanding, sometimes even beyond the reach of the Internet and high-tech industries that are generally recognized as high-paying. However, China Business News reporter counted the salaries of top leaders of 13 car companies in the past year and found that the salary gap between CEOs of different car companies is also very large.
4 CEO Annual salary exceeds 100 million
In terms of annual salary of CEOs of car companies, reporters found through statistics that European and American companies are basically the highest, followed by domestic private car companies, followed by state-owned enterprises. But unexpectedly, domestic new car manufacturers Power is at the bottom.
First Financial Charting Data source: public information
In the past year, the CEO salaries of Tesla, Stellantis, GM and Ford all exceeded 100 million yuan. Among them, Musk’s annual salary of US$23.5 billion (approximately RMB 157.5 billion) far exceeds that of other car company CEOs, with a daily income of 430 million yuan. This is mainly due to the stock options granted to him by Tesla in 2018.
At that time, Tesla formulated a ten-year compensation plan. According to the plan, Tesla did not need to pay any salary or cash bonus to Musk in the next ten years, but if Musk led Tesla to achieve According to the market value and performance goals set by the board of directors, stock options of US$78 billion (approximately RMB 522.2 billion) can be obtained. Therefore, Musk's income at Tesla is directly linked to the company's market value and performance.
As Tesla’s performance and market value have surged in recent years, Musk’s salary has also been astonishing, and he has been “top of the list” for four consecutive years. At the end of May this year, Fortune magazine released a list of the 10 highest-paid CEOs among Fortune 500 companies. Musk single-handedly exceeded the combined salary of the other nine CEOs.
Ranked after Musk is Stellantis CEO Tavares . According to data disclosed by Stellantis, Tavares' salary in 2021 totals 19 million euros. Coupled with his high stock awards and long-term salary awards, the total salary is as high as 66 million euros (approximately RMB 465 million).
This also makes Tavares the highest-paid CEO in the European automotive industry in 2021. The annual salary of Diess, CEO of Volkswagen Group , which is also a European car company, is 10.3 million euros (approximately RMB 72.57 million), which is less than 1/6 of Tavares. Of course, Tavares' high salary has also made him controversial.
In addition to Musk and Tavares, the other two CEOs with annual salaries of over 100 million are from American car companies, namely GM's Mary Barra (approximately RMB 200 million) and Ford's Jim Farley ( Approximately RMB 150 million).
Among the 13 car companies counted, most of the annual salary of CEOs of foreign car companies is obtained in the form of stock or option incentives, which results in their salaries being much higher than that of CEOs of domestic car companies.
Among domestic car companies, two private CEOs rank first and second in salary. BYD Wang Chuanfu’s annual salary reaches nearly 5.8 million yuan, Great Wall Motors Wei Jianjun’s annual salary is nearly 5.75 million yuan.
Among state-owned enterprises, Changan Automobile Zhu Ronghua has the highest salary, exceeding 2.47 million yuan. Unexpectedly, the CEO salaries of new domestic car-making forces are ranked at the bottom. Li Xiang's annual salary is only 1.5 million yuan, and He Xiaopeng's is even lower, at 1.35 million yuan.
In this statistics, from Musk, who has the highest annual salary, to He Xiaopeng, who has the lowest, the gap is really more than "108,000 miles". The salary of the former is 116,000 times that of the latter.
It is worth noting that in the past year, although the automotive industry's core shortage and supply chain crisis continued to intensify due to the epidemic, many foreign car company CEOs still achieved salary increases. Among them, Musk’s salary increased by more than 2.5 times year-on-year, Jim Farley’s salary increased by 93%, Akio Toyoda’s salary increased by 55%, and Mary Barra and Diess also achieved increases of more than 20%. This is mainly due to the improvement in operating performance of the companies they lead.
Many executive salaries are higher than CEO
In the process of calculating the salary of the above-mentioned car company executives, the reporter noticed that the CEO of many car companies is not the highest-paid executive.
A few days ago, Toyota's "Securities Report" showed that the company's highest-paid executive is James Kuffner, head of digital strategy. His salary is 906 million yen (approximately RMB 45 million), which is significantly higher than Toyota's. Zhang Nan's salary is high.
It is understood that James Kuffner’s salary comes from two aspects, one is Toyota Motor itself, and the other is Woven Planet Holdings, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor. Among them, the salary provided by Toyota Motor is 252 million yen, and the salary provided by Woven Planet Holdings is 654 million yen.
In fact, in order to attract and retain talents, many domestic car companies have experienced situations where the salary of top leaders is lower than that of other executives. For example, BYD Vice President Li Ke’s annual salary was 7.962 million yuan last year, making him BYD’s highest-paid executive. Wang Chuanfu is 2.16 million yuan higher. This phenomenon is particularly common among new car-making forces.
In February this year, some media released a list of the top 50 annual salaries of senior executives, which attracted a lot of attention because the top spot did not come from the Internet giants, but from Xpeng Motors Vice Chairman and President Gu Hongdi . His personal annual salary is 434 million yuan, surpassing the "Working Emperor" Tencent Group President Liu Chiping , who has an annual salary of 428 million yuan.
reporters found in statistics that Gu Hongdi did receive an annual salary of nearly 435 million yuan, but it occurred in 2020. Gu Hongdi's salary that year was 415.6 times that of He Xiaopeng (1.046 million yuan).
As the matter unfolded, Xpeng Motors responded to the media and stated that more than 99.5% of the executive’s disclosed salary was equity incentives accumulated over many years, not one year’s income, because the company’s valuation has greatly increased before and after the listing. This is a huge improvement, and the equity value has also increased as a result. Gu Hongdi's actual annual salary is more than 2 million yuan.
In 2021, Gu Hongdi's annual salary will be reduced to 8.577 million yuan, but this is also 6.3 times He Xiaopeng's salary. Among Xpeng Motors, in addition to Gu Hongdi, the salary of Xia Heng, president of Xpeng Motors, was also higher than that of He Xiaopeng last year.
The phenomenon of lower wages for top leaders is also common in Li Auto. From 2020 to 2021, among the three executive salaries announced by Li Auto, Li Xiang was the lowest. In 2021, Li Auto President Shen Yanan's salary is 87.5 million yuan, 58 times that of Li Xiang; Li Xiang's CFO Li Tie's salary is 2.706 million yuan, which is also more than 1.2 million yuan higher than Li Xiang.
Thanks to stock and option incentives, the salaries of the executives of the above-mentioned new car-making forces are also highly competitive compared with other multinational car companies.
Although Weilai Automobile has not announced specific executive salaries, the figures in share-based payment compensation are equally huge. In 2019, NIO's salary expenses were 333.5 million yuan, in 2020 it was 187.1 million yuan, and in 2021 it was 1.0101 billion yuan. As of December 31, 2021, NIO's unconfirmed share-based payment compensation expenses for share options and restricted shares were 5.909 billion yuan.
In addition, new car-making forces have further pushed up the average salary of ordinary employees of car companies. According to reporter statistics, in 2021, the average salary of employees in the R&D department of Li Auto is 609,000 yuan; the average salary of employees in sales and administrative management (excluding production) departments is nearly 214,000 yuan.
