Shortly before the end of his professional career at the world's largest brewery company, the outgoing boss of the beer company AB InBev, Carlos Brito, benefits once again from earlier salary commitments: According to an estimate, his earnings in the past year add up to around 95 million euros, as he has stock options that he was granted by his employer more than 10 years ago.

This is the result of a study by the remuneration consultancy hkp on the salaries of top European managers, which analyzed the annual reports of major European companies.

Tillmann Neuscheler

Editor in business.

  • Follow I follow

    The majority of Carlos Brito's earnings come from stock option programs from 2008 and 2009 that Brito took advantage of last year.

    He was able to purchase almost 1.5 million shares at a price of around 10 euros and another 960,000 shares at a price of around 33 euros.

    Since no date on which the stock options were exercised is specified in the annual report itself, the stock price of around EUR 57 at the end of the 2020 financial year was assumed for the estimate.

    For the past year itself, Brito received a significantly lower salary from his employer than in previous years. Only 1.2 million euros. The brewery manager, who passed the scepter on to his successor Michel Doukeris after 17 years at the helm of AB InBev in the summer, is now at the lower end of the companies listed in the STOXX share indices. The case is an example of how big the discrepancy can be between the remuneration granted and the remuneration actually received for managers.

    According to the study, Linde boss Steve Angel is one of the top earners in Europe: he was granted around 13.9 million euros for the past year.

    But because he was also able to exercise stock options that had already been granted to him in previous years, he received direct compensation of more than 50 million euros last year, as the FAZ reported in April.

    Apart from such peak values, the remuneration granted in the pandemic year 2020 in the leading listed companies in Europe fell significantly.

    According to the hkp, the different identification standards prevent a viable Europe-wide comparison of the remuneration actually received: “The identification practice in Europe is like a patchwork quilt,” complains remuneration advisor Regine Siepmann.