What the telecoms CEOs earn
The local telecoms environment is not an easy commercial space to work in with constant political interference and pressure to maintain very high profits. The rewards for running one of these companies are however significant, as seen in the total remuneration packages from the various CEOs, executives and directors.
For this article the emolument figures for the CEO and/or directors in the respective companies’ annual reports were used. These figures should give an accurate reflection of the total remuneration of an employee or director, which includes salary and bonuses.
Telkom
Papi Molotsane, Telkom’s previous CEO left on 5 April 2007 under suspicious circumstances, received a total remuneration package of R 3 925 987 for his last year of service to the company. During his previous six months of his employment he received R 5 602 995, significantly more than his last 12 moths at the helm of Telkom.
Shirley Lue Arnold was appointed to the Board on November 1, 2006 as chairperson and non-executive director, and for her services up to March 31, 2007 she received R 353 719.
MTN
MTN’s CEO, Nhleko, received a total package of R 14 037 000 in 2006. This included bonuses of R 8 488 000 and a basic salary of R 4 905 000. This is up from R 8 899 000 the previous year.
Cyril Ramaphosa, as non-executive director and chairman of MTN earned a respectable R 955 000 from the company in 2006.
Vodacom
While the other top brass generally take home a few million per year, Vodacom seems to be the place to work if you are an executive.
The executive directors at Vodacom, namely Alan Knott-Craig, Pieter Uys, Leon Crouse and Shameel Aziz Joosub, shared a total “executive directors’ emoluments” of R 74.5 Million. This equates to an average package of R 18.625 Million per executive.
Vodacom said that an exact breakdown per individual can not be given, but it is safe to assume that none of these directors is struggling financially. This total “executive directors’ emoluments” is however substantially less than the R 96.1 Million – or R 24 Million per individual on average – shared by the same group of Vodacom executives the previous year.
Vox Telecom
A new player in the telecoms ‘major leagues’ is Vox Telecom. Its CEO, Douglas Reed, was paid R 1 140 000 for the period 1 Sep 2005 to 31 Aug 2006. This is up from his R 1 020 000 total remuneration for the previous 12 months.
It is interesting to note that the total emoluments received by Vox Telecom directors – both executive and non-executive – was R 2 679 625. This is less than the emoluments for any single CEO any of the larger telecoms companies.
Others
As Cell C, Virgin Mobile, Neotel and iBurst are not listed companies details about the packages of their respective CEOs are not publicly available.