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Ola Källenius: Does he lead the list of DAX top earners?
Photo: Bernd Weißbrod / dpa
High bonus payments almost doubled Mercedes boss Ola Källenius' remuneration last year.
In total, the car manufacturer's CEO earned 12.74 million euros including pension costs, as shown in the remuneration report.
That was 80 percent more than in 2022.
Källenius is one of the top earners among the CEOs of the 40 DAX companies - it is even the highest salary of a DAX CEO to date for 2023. However, there are still no annual reports from numerous companies in the leading index.
According to the Reuters news agency, the fact that Källenius' jump was so high was due to several factors: The basic salary at Mercedes-Benz was increased last year after manager salaries had not been increased since 2018.
According to Reuters, variable bonuses increased because a long-term incentive program that has been running since 2019 was paid out and because the targets linked to returns and cash flow were exceeded.
In addition, at Mercedes-Benz, half of the annual bonus is no longer paid out until the following year.
Källenius earns more than VW and Porsche boss Blume
Last year, the Stuttgart car manufacturer introduced the achievement of sustainability goals as a further criterion for measuring the performance of top managers.
Källenius announced this shortly after taking office in 2019.
Källenius earned more than Volkswagen boss Oliver Blume last year.
He received 9.71 million euros for his dual role as head of the two DAX companies VW and Porsche.
According to data available so far, only Källenius and Källenius are the only women to have a double-digit million salary last year to run a DAX company: Belen Garijo exceeded ten at Merck KGaA for the third time in a row with a constant remuneration of 10.53 million euros -million threshold.
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