Germany’s top companies are still too secretive about how much their senior executives earn, the country’s leading investors’ association complained on Thursday.
Despite legal changes in 2005 that forced listed companies to publish executives’ earnings on an individual basis, many companies still use loopholes – for instance over pension and other entitlements – to hide “the real costs to shareholders of executive boards”, according to Ulrich Hocker, director of the DSW investors’ association.
Speaking at the launch of a DSW report on 2006 executive pay in listed companies, he said “details of what companies actually pay their top executives” were still missing from many annual reports.
The study showed that Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank chief executive, was the best paid among DAX companies, earning €13.2m ($17.8m) last year – €9.4m in salary payments and €3.8m in stock options. He earned €11.9m in 2005.
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