Samsung Elec. execs lead top 1,000 companies in pay

Samsung Electronics paid the highest executive salaries in Korea last year with a per capita average of 10.9 billion won (9.34 million U.S. dollars).

The average salary among registered executives at Korea`s 1,000 largest companies in sales was 376.7 million won (322,912 dollars) last year, up 23.8 percent or 72.4 million won (62,012 dollars) from 2010.

Registered executives refer to top-tier managers including the CEO and chief financial operator. Each company among the top 1,000 has about five of them.

The Korea CXO Institute said Monday that second place went to SK Innovation with 4.65 billion won (3.98 million dollars). Four affiliates of SK Group were listed in the top 10.

Samsung Group executives also earned the most with 2.08 billion won (1.78 million dollars) on average, followed by SK Group with 1.44 billion won (1.23 million dollars), Hyundai Motor 1.01 billion won (859,957 dollars), Doosan Group 973 million won (833,404 dollars), and Hanjin Group 922 million won (789,721 dollars).

Executive salaries in the IT sector was the highest at an average of 480 million won (411,134 dollars), with that of SK Telecom coming in at 3.48 billion won (2.98 million dollars) and NHN`s 1.86 billion won (1.59 million dollars)

In the tech-heavy KOSDAQ market, the annual executive salary of Celltrion was 2.13 billion won (14th) to outpace Hyundai Motor`s 2.1 billion won (1.79 million dollars), Samsung Engineering`s 1.9 billion won (1.63 million dollars) and LG Group`s 1.68 billion won (1.45 million dollars).

The ratio of compensation per executive in total sales was 0.76294 percent at Celltrion, which raked in 300 billion won (257 million dollars) in annual sales. The figure was five times the average ratio at companies with sales between 100 billion won (85.65 million dollars) and 500 billion won (4.28 million dollars).

The average ratio of overall companies was 0.14110 percent, with that of Samsung Electronics at 0.00902 percent to rank 951st. This means that the company`s executives received the highest amount in absolute levels but not so high considering sales.

The think tank`s director Oh Il-seon said, "Though companies have their own criteria in setting executive compensation, they still need to explain to shareholders if compensation levels are higher than expected compared with sales."

jjy2011@donga.com