The "vulgarest" of them all are the bankers! Most of them work for unlisted companies, so we don't even know how many digits are there in their salaries. And that, btw, is in US $. So should we shoot them or easier still, take away their Mercs and sea-facing apartments? Why are we grudging them their earnings in the first place? Nobody seems to be complaining that Dhoni makes Rs 50 crores for his skills and good looks or Akshay Kumar makes Rs 100 crore for neither. And if that's what their customers paid them, then why would they look a gift horse in the mouth? Corporates are willing to pay bankers 0.5% to 2% of the deal value for any fund-raising activity or M&A deals... a bit like what real-estate agents earn from rental or buy/sell deals. The cost of doing the deal is quite limited - they just have to pay for plush offices and assistants to make wonderful slide packs. It's skills and good looks all the way. Except when a deal goes sour after months of work (like the Bharti-MTN one), most bankers end up closing a few deals every year. Most large banks do not touch a deal if they cannot earn a minimum $1mn fees. If it is a large deal (by Indian standards), they ought to earn at least $3-5mn. Of course, that won't get split evenly... like everywhere, the big fish make much more than the junior analysts. An entry level banker (in India) should be making at least $50K (25L INR); successful senior folks wouldn't settle for anything less than $1mn. The CEOs obviously make several of those millions. Do you need these guys to make deals happen? Many corporate executives will tell you, We don't really need these suits to come in; anyways we end up doing all the intelligent work. The bankers just look pretty at all the meetings. But, face it, can you do an M&A deal on magicbricks.com? Or launch your public offer at giveindia.com? Corporates ought to re-look at the way I-banking fees are determined. Most companies don't want to pay for a failed transaction, and therefore, settle for a 1% success fee: if I am spending 100, what is 1 more? The i-bankers take all the risk of the deal, and end up getting a huge upside when a transaction is consummated. Perhaps, a fixed retainer that compensates the bankers for their work (like consultants get paid), even if a deal breaks, could reduce the super-normal upside of a successful transaction. Till then, die you bankers!
... or so our politicians would have us believe. Having imposed cattle class on their ilk, the high-priests of austerity have turned to a new, softer target: executive salaries. Never mind, that in our so-called "liberal" economy, the Government has no locus standi on determining or even influencing salaries in private sector enterprise. It is the owners of the enterprise, the shareholders who must decide what they want to pay their managers. If they believe that a CEO is worth paying Rs 50 crores, so be it, even though it might be 12,500 times the per capita GDP of India (as TOI informed us recently). Remember, there are many CEOs, including those of blue-chip companies, whose CEOs get paid far less. Far, far less, in fact. That is the question investors (and perhaps the Government as the regulator) must try and solve. Why can some companies attract CEOs - highly experienced professionals - for a compensation of about Rs 1-5 crores whereas other companies end up paying 10-50 times as much? It is very obvious that owner-CEOs have a significantly higher level of compensation than professional-CEOs. In a large Indian telecom company, the owner Executive Chairman received almost 8 times as much compensation as the professional MD. Are the public and institutional shareholders exercising any control or influence over executive compensation, particularly when the "executive" is a significant shareholder himself/herself? The blame, if any, must then lie with the "independent" Directors who are letting the promoters decide how much to pay themselves. (Btw, politicians have the same problem: MPs vote for their own salary hikes in Parliament.) So, Mr. Minister, the answer does not lie in "regulating" executive compensation and/or asking for "restraint". The Government needs to ensure, through regulation and education, that our publicly listed companies behave like public companies, with active public shareholders (represented by strong, knowledgeable and truly independent Directors). We have too many private fiefdoms masquerading as public companies in India.