Despite Corona losses, salaries at the top of top German corporations are still being paid that are many times higher than the average income of employees.

The board members of the DAX corporations received an average of 48 times as much last year as an average employee in their company.

This was the result of a study by the German Association for Protection of Securities Holdings (DSW) and the Technical University of Munich.

However, the gap became a little smaller in 2020, as can be seen from the calculations presented on Tuesday: In 2019, board members earned 49 times as much as their employees in the German share index, and in 2018 it was even 52 times. On average, a board member in the Dax - including the CEOs - came to a total remuneration of a good 3.4 million euros, according to the study last year. That was 3.3 percent less than a year earlier.

"Decisive for the decline in executive board salaries was the profit development of the DAX companies," explained the Munich scientist Gunther Friedl in Frankfurt.

“In the Corona year 2020, operating profits before interest and taxes fell by more than 25 percent.

As a result, the bonuses also fell, namely by a significant 18.9 percent. ”At the same time, however, the fixed remuneration increased by 1.2 percent compared to the previous year.

Stephen Angel at the top of the top earner list

According to the calculation, the CEOs of the DAX companies received an average of around 5.4 million euros for the 2020 financial year, about 76 times the average salary. The top earner is Stephen Angel from Linde (a good 14 million euros), followed by Christian Klein from SAP (8.4 million euros) and Volkswagen driver Herbert Diess (7.9 million euros). At the bottom of the Dax 30 ranking is MTU boss Reiner Winkler with a total remuneration of almost 1.9 million euros. This includes the fixed salary as well as the short-term and long-term variable remuneration. There are numerous studies on the remuneration of the Executive Board, the results of which sometimes differ significantly due to different calculation methods.

Women are rarely represented on the DAX boards with less than 18 percent, but earn an average of 3.4 million euros more than their male colleagues with 2.9 million euros.

If you look at the entire board, according to DSW in the Dax, the software company SAP pays the best with an average of 7.4 million euros.

If you include pensions and one-off payments, the automaker VW stands out with particularly high sums.

"Board members with a million-dollar salary can and should take care of their retirement provisions themselves," demanded DSW General Manager Marc Tüngler.

"Pension commitments and entitlements belong in the moth box."

American bosses often earn even better

In an international comparison, the sums published by the DSW appear modest, at least in individual cases: According to the analysis, the head of the French software company Dassault Systèmes, Bernard Charlès, stands out in Europe with around 20.5 million euros.

In the USA, Nike boss John Donahoe even comes to around 46.8 million euros.

The differences are far greater when newcomers are also taken into account in addition to the established companies, as the consulting firm Equilar did on behalf of the “New York Times”.

The 200 highest-paid US company bosses earned 274 times as much as their employees, a further increase: in 2019 it was 245 times as much.

Stock options and other incentives were also taken into account here, so that eight American CEOs alone exceeded the limit of $ 100 million in annual salaries. Lonely at the top will be the head of the software company Palantir, Alexander Karp, with 1.1 billion dollars in 2020. At 40 million dollars, the highest-paid woman, Lisa Su from chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, only made it to 40th place in the ranking.