Here’s How Much Africa’s Largest Telco Paid Its Top Executives In 2019

One of the more interesting ‘side notes’ of the yearly Integrated Report put out by the largest mobile telecommunications company in Africa, MTN Group, is the part that gives details of salaries earned by the company’s top executives in the past year.

Yes, every year, the South African multinational telecoms company pretty much puts out a list that can be titled: “This Is How Much We Paid Our Executives This Past Year.”

Like clockwork, MTN has published its Integrated Report for the year ended 31 December 2019. And as expected, parts of the report details how much its executives were paid. Well, let’s just say there were a lot of big sums flying here and there.

The CEO of MTN Group, Rob Shuter, received a total remuneration package of ZAR 58.2 Mn (USD 3.26 Mn) in 2019, which included a ZAR 17.3-million (USD 970 K) salary and ZAR 27.5 Mn (USD 1.5 Mn) in bonuses.

In all fairness, the figure is not exactly mind-blowing but there’s no gainsaying that it’s a sizeable take-home for the CEO of a telco that is the largest on the continent by both subscriber base and revenue.

In 2018, Brand Finance reported that the MTN brand is worth USD 3.3 Bn, up 9 percent from 2017. Currently, MTN is active in up to 18 African countries with a subscriber base that has since surpassed 230 million.

MTN Group’s CEO, Shuter, who is set to step down from his position at the end of his four-year contract in March 2021, is not the only one with a sizeable paycheck.

Ralph Mupita, MTN Group CFO, earned a ZAR 9.1 Mn (USD 510 K) salary and ZAR 13.4 Mn (USD 750 K) in bonuses. Mupita also received ZAR 43.7 Mn (USD 2.4 Mn) in “other benefits” – taking his total remuneration for the year to ZAR 66.3 Mn (USD 3.7 Mn).

Yes, the CEO was not the highest earner as the numbers point out. Just to add, Shuter and Mupita are MTN Group’s only two executive directors.

Among MTN’s prescribed officers, there were 10 names listed which earned a combined total of ZAR 167.6 Mn (UD 9.39 Mn).

MTN South Africa CEO, Godfrey Motsa, took home ZAR 15.6 Mn (USD 875 K) in remuneration in 2019, which included a ZAR 7.3 Mn (USD 409 K) salary and ZAR 6.8 (USD 381 K) Mn as bonus.

However, MTN VP for the Middle East and North Africa, Ismail Jaroudi, was the top-earning prescribed officer, taking home ZAR 25 Mn (USD 1.4 Mn), while MTN Group’s COO, Jens Schulte-Bockum, received a pay ZAR 23.9 Mn (USD 1.34 Mn) in 2019.

For Ferdi Moolman, CEO of MTN Nigeria, which is the group’s biggest and most profitable subsidiary, last year’s take-home was ZAR 21.1 Mn (USD 1.18 Mn) in total, of which ZAR 9.6 Mn (USD 538 K) was salary and bonuses accounted for ZAR 8.1 Mn (USD 454 K).

Featured Image Courtesy: BBC