The gender pay gap has been a hot topic as of late. To contribute to the matter, I decided to look into the subject of auto industry pay and, in particular, the salaries of automotive industry executives.
There isn’t as much information as I would’ve expected to find on tyre industry pay rates. So I’m combining them with automobile manufacturers’ chiefs and other related industry professionals.
GM’s CEO tops the pay chart
Mary Barra, first female CEO of major automobile corporation topped the list of highest earners. During the 2016 fiscal year, General Motors chief netted a cool salary of just over €19 million. And that is after a 30% pay cut when compared to 2015. In 2015 GM executives received a once-off retention bonus. Anyhow, it is nice to see a woman leading in such a manly industry. She narrowly passed Thomas R. Greco, CEO of Advance Auto Parts. Mr.Geco netted in €19.25 million from the largest car parts retailer in the US.
Next in line to Mary Barra and Thomas Greco was Ford motor company’s Mark Fields. After seeing a 19% increase compared to previous year, Mark was paid €18.65 million for 2016. Right after Mr.Fields, we have Richard Kramer from Goodyear. He is by far the highest earner in the tyre industry, receiving a compensation package worth €16.7 million.
Goodyear v Bridgestone – Which tyre-maker pays their CEO top dollar?
Now let’s take a closer look at Goodyear’s CEO salary compared to the other main tyre-maker’s CEOs. Bridgestone’s Masaaki Tsuya was paid just over €1 million for his services. Let’s not forget that Bridgestone is the largest tyre company in the world. Let’s look at another example. Jean-Dominique Senard from Michelin received a package worth €2.81 million in 2016. Goodyear’s number two executive Laura Thompson took home €4.3 million, which is more than Bridgestone’s and Michelin’s CEOs combined. Well, it looks like Goodyear appreciates their staff more than competitors do.
Now back to the broader list. A man by the name of Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler was awarded €9.9 million for his services. Volkswagen, the largest automobile manufacturer in the world, paid their CEO Matthias Muller – €7.3 million.
Tesla’s Elon Musk amongst the lowest paid
The lowest paid executive in the industry in 2016 was Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla. His pay package was worth just over €30,000, which is minuscule when compared to counterparts above. Luckily, Elon Musk owns over 33 million shares of Tesla, setting his net worth at just under €10 billion.
To conclude the article, it looks like there are three grades of CEO pay in the industry. CEOs working for Asian companies get the smallest pay-packet. Then there are European CEOs which are middle-ranking is terms of pay. And then we have the American CEOs. Payments for members of this exclusive club are measured in tens of millions.
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