Mukesh Ambani will not take salary, Staff to get 50 pc less

Mumbai : India’s largest company Reliance Industries has decided to cut the salary of most of its employees by up to 50 per cent firm’s chairman and richest Indian Mukesh Ambani agreeing to forgo all his remuneration , according to news agencies Reuters and PTI.

Reuters quoted a company note to employees and six other sources confirming that employees earning more than Rs 15 lakh a year will face a 10 per cent salary cut, while the cuts will be 30 per cent to 50 per cent for senior executives.

Also, the oil-to-technology conglomerate has deferred annual cash bonus and performance-linked incentives that are normally paid in the first quarter, according to the employee communique.

“The hydrocarbons business has been adversely impacted due to reduction in demand for refined products and petrochemicals… the situation demands that we maintain razor sharp focus on operating costs and fixed costs and all of us need to contribute to make this happen,” Reuters quoted Executive Director Hital R Meswani saying in the letter.

“Our Chairman has agreed to forgo his entire compensation,” he added, referring to Ambani.

A spokesman for Reliance did not immediately respond to an e-mail by Dainik Jagran on the aforesaid development.

“We will closely monitor the economic and business environment, re-evaluate our response to the situation on a continuous basis and strive to improve the earning capacity of our business,” it said.

The lockdown period, the company communique said, has also provided several opportunities to reorganise and digitalise business processes to generate significant improvements in productivity, efficiency and costs.

“Together, we will embrace these opportunities and work towards restoring our compensation levels to normalcy,” it said.

The communication said the firm’s various initiatives on all fronts will help it strengthen organisation to become more resilient in coping with business uncertainties in a volatile and uncertain world. They will help us navigate through these challenging times with agility and emerge as industry leaders and as accretors of top talent.

It was not immediately clear whether other Reliance divisions were affected, but three of the sources ,quoted by Reuters, said that the company’s telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm, did not appear to have been impacted as of Thursday.

Facebook this month revealed plans to spend $5.7 billion to buy a 9.99% stake in Reliance’s digital arm.