Number of Hindustan Unilever's annual crorepati employees falls by 25%

Last fiscal, the number of HUL executives earning eight-digit salaries fell by a quarter, because of slow growth in sales and declining profit. As compared to 169 HUL managers, the number of executives who took home more than one crore as annual salary fell to 129.

"While the year hasn't been great for HUL in terms of profitability, the final payout could have been impacted due to variable pay linked to sales, profit or market share. Also, payout depends on the company's outlook for next year," Abneesh Roy, associate director, at Edelweiss Securities, told ET.

In HUL, managers are given an option to defer a part of their bonus and receive a larger amount (higher than what they deferred) based on how the company performed in the following three years.

Last fiscal saw HUL's domestic consumer business posting one of its slowest sales growths of 4%, while adjusted profit after tax rose to 3.5%.

"Our reward philosophy is to ensure our employees are paid market competitive total reward which is in line with our performance culture. The remuneration paid out... is in line with our reward policies and it is inappropriate to do a year-on-year comparison of number of individuals earning above a certain range or the actual remuneration figures given the multitude of variables impacting the same," an HUL spokesperson told ET.

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