Salaries: Dax remuneration ranking is led by ex-bosses Rorsted and Diess

Mila April 21, 2023

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In Germany it pays the most to have been the head of a Dax group. Two retiring CEOs are topping the top 40 publicly traded company payrolls in 2022 thanks to their long-term contracts, according to an analysis of pay reports.

According to calculations by the Reuters news agency, Adidas boss Kasper Rorsted received a total of 15.37 million euros thanks to a 12 million euro severance payment. Former Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess will continue to have his salary paid after his resignation in the summer until his contract expires in October 2025. Last year he came up with 11.83 million euros.

Diess’ successor Oliver Blume is only in sixth place in the ranking of active Dax bosses with 7.39 million euros. It is led by Deutsche Börse boss Theodor Weimer, whose remuneration more than doubled to EUR 11.53 (2021: 5.64) million thanks to the payment of a tranche of long-term bonuses.

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A total of three incumbent Dax bosses earned more than ten million euros. In addition to Weimer, there were BMW CEO Oliver Zipse (10.87 million) and the only female leader of a Dax company, Belen Garijo from the chemical and pharmaceutical group Merck, who, with 10.53 million euros for the second time in a row, reached a double-digit million salary came.

Difficult to compare

The “poorest” Dax bosses work for Zalando. With 78,000 euros each, the company founders and co-bosses of the online retailer, Robert Gentz and David Schneider, are at the bottom end of the remuneration list. There were no bonuses for them. But the mini-salary is put into perspective when looking at 2021: They had received Zalando shares worth 45.5 million euros each from the exercise of stock options from the years surrounding the IPO.

Post boss Frank Appel had to make the biggest cuts among the top earners in the Dax, who was still at the top of the salary list in 2021 with 11.89 million euros after his long-term bonuses were due. With 6.99 million, it was only enough for eighth place in 2022. Winners and losers among the Dax bosses balance each other out. 19 managers earned more, 18 less, one earned the same salary as a year earlier. Biotech supplier Qiagen has not yet released a compensation report.

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The values refer to the “granted and owed remuneration” including the pension contributions that the companies pay for their bosses. In addition to the base salary, this includes the annual bonuses that managers are entitled to for their performance in 2022, as well as the long-term bonuses from previous years that were due. Where the remuneration reports deviate from the usual presentation, the amounts are calculated on a comparable basis. The uniform tables according to the Corporate Governance Code (DCGK) were replaced by a legal regulation in 2021, which is interpreted differently. The companies did their duty, says compensation expert Regine Siepmann from the consulting firm hkp. But the comprehensibility and comparability fell by the wayside. “The goal of the second European Shareholder Rights Directive and its German implementation was missed.”

All car manufacturers among the “top seven”

On average, it still earns best in the auto industry. The “Top 7” includes Zipse, Blume and Mercedes-Benz boss Ola Källenius (7.09 million), the bosses of all three major car manufacturers. The new VW CEO Blume received no extra salary for his “side job” at the sports car subsidiary Porsche AG 2022. The millions in bonuses that the Porsche board members were promised for the successful IPO will only be paid out gradually over the next few years, depending on how the share develops.

Some Dax bosses can hope for significantly more money in the next few years. In 2022, SAP boss Christian Klein was still in the middle with a total remuneration of 4.89 million euros, but in that year alone he was entitled to long-term bonuses of 5.5 million euros. The “salary cap” that most Dax companies have collected for their board members is particularly high for him at up to 34 million euros.

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