Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, may not have given himself a salary hike last year but most other CEOs took home more in 2009-10 than they did the previous year. Ambani?s pay cheque of Rs 15 crore must be among the fattest in the country, but the list of the highest-paid CEOs also includes Sun TV Network owner Kalanithi Maran, Apollo Tyres promoter Onkar S Kanwar, Cadila Health CMD Pankaj R Patel, Bharti Airtel chief Sunil Mittal and Gujarat Flurochem MD Vivek Jain. Nearly 69% of the CEOs, out of a sample of 198 companies studied, took a pay hike in 2009-10, though those taking a pay cut was also significant at 26%.

Kanwar took the biggest hike last year while Mittal was content to up his salary by just 2.6%, even though his firm?s profits grew 22%. Of course, that was higher than what the rest at Bharti seem to have got because the total wage bill at the telecom firm remained flat at Rs 1,407 crore.

While the Companies Act, 1956 has put a ceiling on managerial remuneration?it cannot exceed 11% of net profits of a company in a financial year?Varun Shipping CEO took more than 11% of his company’s profit.

Indeed, the increase in the salary bill for the heads of the 198 firms studied, was just over 21% year on year at Rs 806 crore, a substantial jump. It would be pertinent to note that the revenue growth for these firms went up by a very unimpressive 12% year on year to Rs 8.94 lakh crore. However, thanks to lower outflows on interest and higher other incomes, their bottom line grew 21% to Rs 1.14 lakh crore.

Also, CEOs seem to have been rewarded more than others because the total wage bill for these companies went up by just 6.2% to Rs 78,153 crore. Indeed, there were several CEOs whose salaries saw a bigger jump than the bottom lines of their companies. Among these honchos were Apollo Hospitals executive chairman Prathap C Reddy, Ashok Leyland MD R Seshasayee, Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, and Emami chairman RS Agarwal.

Instances where the CEO?s salaries have increased significantly despite a decline in net profit of the companies that they run include VRS Natarajan, CMD of BEML, Srikumar Menon of BOC India, Biplab Mazumdar, vice-chairman of ABB, and Nimish Patel, wholetime director, Patel Engineering.