The board of directors of TotalEnergies indicated Thursday that it would propose at the general meeting of shareholders on May 26 a 10% increase in the remuneration of its CEO Patrick Pouyanné, who came under fire last year for his salary statements. The board will submit a motion providing that “the compensation and the allocation of performance shares for 2023 are proposed to increase by 10% compared to 2022”, according to a press release from the group on the convening of this general meeting.
This is an “increase equivalent to that which benefited on average the executives of the common social base in France”, specified the group. The increase comes on the one hand from the increase in salary of 10%, on the variable part – the fixed remuneration of 1.5 million euros not changing; and on the other hand the 10% increase in the number of performance shares, a source at TotalEnergies told AFP.
Executive salaries increased by 7.5%
This increase followed a 36.4% drop in his compensation in 2020, the result of a salary cut then presented as “voluntary” during the health crisis and the decline in the variable part of his salary that year linked to the group results. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, it amounted to 6.15 million euros.
“It is not me who sets my compensation, but the Board of Directors of TotalEnergies which sets it and the shareholders who approve it – it is certainly high, but comparable to my peers in the CAC40 and much lower than that of the other european majors[ne]s and american[e]s” of the petrochemical sector, had defended the CEO on Twitter.