Salary Benchmarks: Meet Asia's Millionaire CFOs

by Cesar Bacani, 06 August 2012

0 comments

Facebook

Digg

Twitter

topics:
Human Capital Management

tags:
CFO compensation Professional Development

It’s bad form to ask someone how much money he or she makes, but how else can you benchmark your own compensation against those of your peers?

Fortunately for those finance professionals negotiating a salary package and for everyone else looking to direct their career to greener pastures, many stock markets require or encourage public companies to disclose executive compensation.

You don't need to read each and every regulatory filing. S&P Capital IQ, a provider of multi-asset class and real-time data, research and analytics, follows more than 21,000 listed Asia-headquartered companies. Of that total, it has found compensation data for 1,524 CFOs, as reported by their company to stock market regulators.

This is a seriously big number. The salary guides put out by executive compensation firms are usually based on surveys of 500 or so CFOs, who typically do not reveal their actual pay and instead give a range of numbers. The S&P Capital IQ figures are actual salaries plus bonus, restricted stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentive plan compensation and all other forms of compensation.

Million-Dollar Wages

So what can CFOs learn about market salary rates in the region? For one thing, finance chiefs as a group are not doing too shabbily. Of the 1,524 CFO compensation packages in fiscal year 2011 tracked by S&P Capital, 117 – that’s 7.7% of the total -- had a value of US$1 million or more.

The average total compensation across the region is equivalent to US$364,606 (see below). The median package is worth US$208,588. These figures are tilted towards Australia, China, India and Hong Kong – S&P Capital’s database has limited CFO compensation information on companies headquartered in Japan, Korea, Singapore and Southeast Asia.

In US dollar terms, the average compensation of CFOs in Hong Kong last year came to US$447,487 while average compensation in Australia was clocked at US$442,435, reflecting in part the Australian dollar’s strength against the greenback. The average total compensation in China was US$251,440 and US$125,709 in India.

Click image to enlarge

Average and Median CFO Salaries and Total Compensation

Interestingly, while base salaries (region average: US$216,280) account for 60% of total compensation Asia-wide, they comprise only 50% of total compensation in Hong Kong and an even lower 47% in China. It seems CFO compensation packages in these two markets are skewed more towards bonuses (presumably based on profit-sharing and performance) and other non-salary incentives compared with CFO packages in Australia and India.

Comment on this article

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Comment: *

Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <a> <p> <span> <div> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <img> <img /> <map> <area> <hr> <br> <br /> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <table> <tr> <td> <em> <b> <u> <i> <strong> <font> <del> <ins> <sub> <sup> <quote> <blockquote> <pre> <address> <code> <cite> <embed> <object> <strike> <caption>
Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Use  to create page breaks.

More information about formatting options

Verification Code

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What is the second word in the phrase "avapon efey figub isayak uwod"?: *

Accounting and Regulations

CFO innovation Asia Accounting and Regulation the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Accounting Regulation, IFRS, US GAAP, Tax, investor relations, corporate governance, Corporate Law, Financial Regulators, Internal Audit, Audit, Corporate Law.

Auditing, Investor Relations, Law and Compliance, Tax

Finance and Banking

CFO innovation Asia, Finance and Banking the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Corporate Finance, trade finance, treasury and risk management, capital expenditure, Banking, mergers and acquisitions

Cash and Liquidity Management, Corporate Finance, Insurance, Treasury Management

Management

CFO innovation Asia the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Finance Management, Corporate Governance, Human Resource Management, Compensation and Benefits, Mergers and Acquisitions, Professional Development, Corporate Real Estate, Risk Management, Budgeting and Forecasting, Business Process Management, Business Process Reengineering, Outsourcing.

Budgeting and Planning, Business Expense Management, Human Capital Management, Outsourcing and Shared Services, Risk Management

Metrics

Corporates, Financial Services

Technology

CFO innovation Asia Technology the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Finance Systems, Business Intelligence, EPR, Accounting software, CRM, Cloud Computing, Telecommunications, Business Process Outsourcing, Business Process Management Software.

Business Intelligence, Enterprise Software and Systems, Financial Systems, Security