There May Be a ‘China Angle’ in Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s $5.5 Million ‘Salary Cut’

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saw a 63% increase in his salary for fiscal year 2024. As revealed by the company in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nadella’s total compensation for the fiscal year ended June 30 was approximately $79 .1 million (about Rs 665 crore). This increase was mainly due to share awards. The filing showed his stock awards rose to $71 million from $39 million last year.

Satya Nadella requested that the monetary compensation be reduced

Nadella’s financial incentive for fiscal year 2024 was $5.2 million, according to the SEC filing. He was originally scheduled to get $10.7 million. The software giant’s boss received $2.5 million in base salary and $170,000 in other compensation.
The filing revealed that Nadella had requested a pay cut this year due to multiple cybersecurity breaches, including the Microsoft outage in July this year that affected Windows users around the world. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a report in April following an independent investigation into China’s breach of the email accounts of U.S. government officials. Microsoft announced the incident in July 2023. In January, the tech giant confirmed that Russian intelligence had gained access to the email accounts of some of its top executives.
“Mr. Nadella agreed that the company’s performance was extremely strong, but reflecting on his personal commitment to safety and his role as CEO, he asked the Board of Directors to consider deviating from established performance measures and its financial reduce incentive to reflect his personal responsibility for focus and policy. speed necessary for the changes that the current cybersecurity threat landscape demonstrated were necessary,” the filing said.

Distribution of Satya Nadella’s earnings

What the report said

It said: “Since the board appointed Mr. Nadella in 2014 as the third CEO in its history, Microsoft has nearly tripled revenue to $245.1 billion (about Rs 2,060 crore), and nearly quadrupled net profit to $88.1 billion (about Rs 740 crore). ), and diluted earnings per share more than quadrupled to $11.80 (about Rs 99 crore). In addition to another year of consistently strong financial performance, Mr. Nadella and his leadership team have positioned Microsoft to continue driving performance for years to come.”