HUGE pay gap! Ex-HDFC Bank CEO earned 40 times more in FY21 than SBI chairman's package

SBI chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara earned over Rs 34.42 lakh for the fiscal year 2021-22.

New Delhi: The State Bank of India (SBI) recently revealed in its FY22 annual report that the public sector bank’s chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara earned over Rs 34.42 lakh for the fiscal year 2021-22. Khara’s pay package includes a Rs 27 lakh base salary and a dearness allowance of Rs 7,42,500. His total remuneration for April 2021 to March 2022 was Rs 34,42,500, the lender said in its report. 

According to reports, Khara's compensation increased by at least 13.45% in the financial year 2021-22 from his predecessor Rajnish Kumar, who took home a salary of Rs 30.34 lakh.

However, in comparison to the salaries of private sector banks’ CEOs, Khara’s take home salary stands quite low, signalling the huge pay gap between the packages of state-owned and private firms. 

For instance, former HDFC Bank CEO Aditya Puri earned Rs 13.82 crore in his retirement year, which was the financial year 2020-21. The pay included Rs 3.5 crore post-retirement benefits.

In the same financial year, HDFC Bank CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan's salary, before his appointment as the chief of the country’s largest bank by market cap, stood at Rs 4.77 crore. 

Meanwhile, Axis Bank CEO’s salary stood at Rs 6.52 crore in FY21. On the other hand, the Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, Uday Kotak, had announced taking Rs 1 as a fixed salary for the year. However, Kotak’s salary in FY20 stood at Rs 2.65 crore. Also Read: LIC shares hit new record low of Rs 720.10, investors lose over Rs 1.4 lakh crore

Also, for the financial year 19-20, ICICI Bank chief Sandeep Bakhshi’s pay stood at Rs Rs 6.31 crore. In FY20-21, he earned Rs 1.01 crore after voluntarily giving up the fixed compensation part in the year that saw the pandemic’s entry to India. Also Read: Markets snap four-day losing run; Sensex jumps over 425 points; Nifty tests 16,500