SMRT CEO paid $2.2m to $2.5m – a multifold jump in three years?

The pay of the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) may have increased by as much as five-folds since 2012.

In its latest annual report (2015), SMRT reports that Mr Desmond Kuek, who became the company’s president and CEO in October 2012, receives a remuneration package which range between $2,250,000 and $2,499,999.

This compares with his remuneration in 2013 of “above $500,000”, according to the company’s annual report then; and a remuneration of between $1,750,000 and $1,999,999 in 2014.

Here are screen caps from the reports:

SMRT staff were recently given a $500 shopping voucher each as a form of SG50 bonus.

Taking the lower bound of $2.25 million, the CEO’s pay could have paid for the shopping vouchers for 4,500 employees – that is more than half of the 7,000 employees under the wings of SMRT.

Incidentally, the largest shareholder of SMRT is Temasek Holdings, at 54 per cent.

Dividends paid in year 2015 amounted to $41 million, a substantial increase over the $30 million in dividends paid out in 2014.

In comparison, the CEO of SBS Transit, Gan Huay Kiat, received much less than his SMRT counterpart, in the $500K – $749K range.

This pay scale is equivalent to Vice-President at SMRT.

The top shareholder at SBS Transit is Comfort Delgro which controls 75 per cent of the public transport operator.

Just 7 shareholders own 83.08% of the total shares.

Dividends paid out were a lot lesser than SMRT’s – $6.6 million in FY2014.

The total dividends paid by the two transport operators since early 2000 is about $2.047 billion.

You can see an overview of the company’s dividends paid out over the years here: “SMRT and SBST Dividends”.