An executive director of received in 2021, on average, a remuneration of 3,273 million euros. That is, he pocketed 60 times more than an average employee, who received about 55,000 euros. This is revealed by the data published yesterday by the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), which unravels the remuneration reality of Spanish companies as never before. Those 3.27 million euros do not include extraordinary items. The director/employee ratio is considerably lower -17 times- among non-Ibex companies. In the set of listed companies in the country it stands at 32 times. .
The market regulator published this Monday the conclusions drawn after analyzing the annual reports on the remuneration of the directors of listed companies, as well as those on corporate governance -by its acronym, Iarc and Iagc- for the year 2021.
Regarding the IARC, this has been the first year in which the companies have had to make comparisons between the remuneration of the directors, the consolidated results and the average remuneration of the workers. From the regulator they warned, in a note to the media, that in these ratios there is “a high dispersion between different companies, sectors or company sizes”.
Regarding the gender gap, the executive directors of the received an average remuneration of 1.8 million euros in 2021, 44% more than their male counterparts. It is not the first time it happens; It already happened in 2021, when they pocketed 8% more. However, in non-Ibex companies, men received an average remuneration of 829,000 euros, 40% more than women (in the previous two years, this difference in favor of male directors was well over 100%).
More female presence
Corporate governance reports, meanwhile, showed that the female presence nearly saved the furniture. He easily exceeded the recommendation of the CNMV Good Governance Code regarding the presence of women on boards: at least 30% was required, and the companies in the reference index reached 34.2%. .
What is new is the data corresponding to the rest of the Spanish market. The non-Ibex listed companies were on the verge of complying with this recommendation, as the percentage of female directors stood at 29.3% (in 2020 it was 26.1%). It cannot be forgotten that, for the 2022 financial year, the regulator’s recommendation already rises to 40%. From the CNMV they point out that the increase in female directors was more noticeable among the independent ones.
With regard to senior management, the CNMV does not issue a specific recommendation, and this lower pressure is evident in the figures: only 22% of the senior managers of the Ibex companies, and barely 20% in the group of quoted, they are female.
Among the aspects that could be improved with regard to remuneration, sources from the regulator pointed out that “it would be convenient to expand the explanations on the evaluation of the degree of compliance with the non-financial parameters to which the variable remuneration of the directors is linked. “.
They also pointed out that the average remuneration of the directors increased last year “both for executives and non-executives; the remuneration of the boards of directors increased by 13.2%, due, among other reasons, to the extraordinary remuneration derived of the dismissal of directors in a company. Without these extraordinary remunerations, the increase would have been 5.2%”. On the other hand, the average participation in shareholders’ meetings continued to rise: it stood at 72.1%, according to the corporate governance reports of Spanish firms.
A reformed Code in 2020
The 2021 financial year has been the seventh in which the 2015 Good Governance Code of listed companies has been applied and the second after the modifications introduced by the review carried out in the midst of the pandemic, in June 2020.
: gender equality, greater relevance of non-financial information and sustainability, greater attention to reputational risks and the introduction of clarifications on the remuneration of directors. In total, the reform introduced variations in 20 of the 64 recommendations that existed, after receiving 40 writings during the public consultation period.
Remuneration issues have only gained prominence in recent years. , that is, environmental, social and governance- scrutinizes remuneration. And this has been strongly felt in the already completed 2022 meeting season. According to data from Georgeson, the average support for the remuneration policies of the 35 of the amounted to 85.7%. It may seem like a high percentage, but the truth is that (in 2018 it was 91%).
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