 "Lakshmi Mittal's salary fell 38% in 2013, but board members paid more")
New Delhi: Chairman and CEO of world’s largest steel-maker ArcelorMittal and one of the richest Indians, took a 38% cut in his salary and perks last year amid his firm reporting second consecutive loss in two years.
As per the annual report of ArcelorMittal for 2013, Mittal was paid $2.29 million as salary and perks last year, down 38.29%, from 2012’s $3.71 million. His base salary declined marginally by 0.57% to $1.76 million, while his short term performance related pay went down by over 72% to $0.53 million.
However, Mittal was allotted 1,50,576 long term performance share units (PSUs), a jump of 20 times than that of last year’s 7,500 PSUs.
[caption id=“attachment_75821” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption]
Interestingly, pay cheques of all Board members, other than Mittal, rose in 2013 despite the poor performance of the company. This includes Mittal’s daughter Vanisha Mittal Bhatia, who got nearly 7% hike in her compensation at $1,84,000.
The report, however, did not mention compensation given to Mittal’s son and company’s CFO Aditya Mittal as he is not a Board member.
In 2013, ArcelorMittal had posted a net loss of $2.545 billion. The loss, though lower than 2012’s $3.352 billion net loss, was due to poor market conditions, which was largely witnessed during the first half of the year.
This had led to company’s operating profit (EBITDA) and sales declining by 10% and 5.67%, respectively. The company has also kept the dividend for 2014 unchanged at $0.20 per share.
Lakshmi Mittal, along with his wife Usha Mittal holds 39.39% stake in ArcelorMittal.
He is also highest paid among the Board members of ArcelorMittal, the report showed. All the 10 Board members of the company, other than Mittal, are non-executive directors. Of them, eight are independent directors.
In 2013, Mittal’s pay cheque was way ahead of the second best paid Lewis B Kaden, the lead independent director, who received 6.87% hike in compensation at $2,80,000.
Narayanan Vaghul, former chairman of ICICI Bank and an independent director of ArcelorMittal, was the third highest paid board member with a compensation of $2,33,000.
Cost cutting by the company was also evident on total salary and wages paid in 2013 to its 2,32,000 workforce, which declined by 3.29% to $9.89 billion.
PTI
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