Home Articles The ballooning pay packages of Australia’s CEOs (or, ‘Ralph Norris, can you...

The ballooning pay packages of Australia’s CEOs (or, ‘Ralph Norris, can you spare a million?’)

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Finding yourself stretched thin to pay the staff wages this month? We offer a quick (and thoroughly outlandish) solution: Ring up Commonwealth Bank CEO Ralph Norris and convince him to hand over a small fraction of his annual pay. How about just an hour’s worth, Ralph?

Sure, the banking mogul says, here you go: $1,844.

So, that’s the lionshare of your overheads covered for another month, but now you’re left a gnawing question: How in the name of Nathan Mayer Rothschild did Ralph Norris end up getting paid (let’s see … multiply by 24, then by 365, carry the 2 …) nearly $16.16 million a year? Even though we’re supposedly recovering from the global financial quagmire, don’t things still generally, you know… suck?

You wouldn’t know that by looking at the top of this graphic put together by the Home Loan Daily, an Australian-based personal finance blog by the folks at Home Loan Finder. According to numbers based on the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ Executive PayWatch report for 2010, the typical CEO took home almost 100 times what the average Aussie worker was paid that year. The average pay for the nation’s top CEOs was $6.4 million.

While Norris was far and away the leader in CEO pay, take a look at the runner-up. Tom Albanese, CEO of international mining company Rio Tinto, made $10.66 million in 2010 — a 328% increase over his pay in 2009 (and note that he’s been in the same job since 2007). That’s a heckuva raise, Tom. Hope you’ve earned it.

Home Finders’ graphic goes on to note that the standard variable rate for home loans taken out with Commonwealth Bank rose from 6.61% in January 2010 to 7.81% December of that year. That meant the average worker paid nearly $4,600 more over the year on their mortgage.

We know: Ouch, right? But hey, all that extra lettuce in Norris’ pockets had to come from somewhere.

Image by Ramberg Media Images

 

Top 10 Highest Paid Aussie CEOs
Produced by Home Loan Finder