Top 500 companies with a large annual income gap between employees and executives

How different is the annual salary of executives in Japanese companies compared to the annual salary of regular employees? Each year, Toyo Keizai Online calculates the average amount of remuneration per officer using the total amount of remuneration and the number of officers listed in each listed company's securities report. They are compared with the average annual income of the employees of the company in question to create an "annual income disparity ranking."

This is the latest version (collected from the period ending August 2020 to the period ending July 2021). The company for the fiscal year ending March 2020 uses the figures for the fiscal year ending March 2021.

There were 165 companies with an annual income gap of 10 times or more between employees and executives, and 77 companies with an average executive compensation of 100 million yen or more. Compared to the previous year's survey, the number of companies with a gap of 10 times or more increased by 7 companies, and the number of companies with executive compensation of 100 million yen or more increased by 4 companies. Even in Japan, where the gap between employees and executives is said to be small, it can be seen that the income gap is gradually widening.

Executives earning more than 100 million yen increase their average remuneration

Toshin Holdings, a mobile phone sales agency based in the Tokai region, ranked first. With the retirement of founder Nobufumi Ishida, the company posted a retirement bonus of about 1 billion yen, which led to an increase in the average remuneration for executives, which temporarily raised the company's ranking.

Second place is Nexon, which works on distribution games for PC, and is a regular high-paying company. He is known for his hits such as "Dungeon&Fighter", which is popular in China, and "Maple Story", which was a hit in South Korea. Nexon's average executive compensation of 323 million yen is about 54 times the average employee annual salary of 5.98 million yen. Two of the three internal directors have compensation of 100 million yen or more. President and CEO Owen Mahoney's executive compensation is 887 million yen, which is equivalent to the compensation of approximately 148 employees. Representative Director Shiro Uemura was also paid more than 100 million yen.

The third place is Takeda Pharmaceutical. It is characterized by calculating and determining the amount of annual bonus payments based on a combination of performance-linked and non-performance-linked compensation in accordance with its own director remuneration policy. In terms of simple average remuneration that is not compared with the average salary of employees, it is the top, and the only one with 500 million yen. Although it is less than last year's over 2 billion yen, President Christophe Weber's executive compensation is still high at 1,874 million yen, which is equivalent to about 175 employees' annual income.