CEO remuneration in the age of inequality — what exactly are we rewarding?

Billionaire wealth is increasing at a much faster rate than that of any other in the world. We live in an extremely unequal era, with gaps widening all over the world. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

Inequality is bad for everyone. It leads to violence and tension. Trickle-down economics has been proven not to work.

The Labour Research Service monitors 70 JSE-listed companies’ financials and directors’ remuneration. And for FY 2025, something glaringly stood out. While not all companies have released FY 2025 remuneration reports, I doubt any company will come near the staggering remuneration of Naspers and Prosus’s CEO, Fabricio Bloisi. Bloisi received a remuneration package worth more than R1-billion — only R10-million of this (1%) is made up of his fixed salary, the rest is tied to incentives, performance share units and stock appreciation rights.

This puts Bloisi in line with the 24th most highly paid CEO on the S&P 500, with similar remuneration packages to the US-based, S&P-listed companies Adobe and Salesforce, whose CEOs earned $52-million and $55-million, respectively, in 2025. Bloisi earned more than the CEOs of Exxon Mobil ($44-million), Uber ($39-million) and JPMorgan Chase & Co ($37-million).

Naspers has shown exceptional growth (its total revenue from continuing operations in 2025 was $7.2-billion). But let’s compare: Adobe reported total revenue of $23.77-billion for FY2025, while Salesforce reported total revenue of $37.9-billion. These companies are reporting three and even five times the revenue of Naspers, yet remunerate CEOs at a similar rate.

How much is too much?

We need to attract and retain talent — this is a valid concern. But it becomes increasingly morally indefensible when the socioeconomic stability of the country is undermined. We need to shift our focus from “What is the global price of a CEO?” to “What is fair in our context?”

Companies have long told us that the reason they pay so much is to ensure good profits and good returns for shareholders. We see from our data that PBT (profit before tax) and CEO compensation do not correlate. The conclusion is that high compensation does not necessarily lead to high profits. Because these data span 10 years, we know that over the longer term it is simply not true that paying a CEO a lot leads to profits.

So, then, what are we rewarding? In a world — and country — with extreme inequality, what are we paying for?

Shoprite is a good example — the company employs more than 150,000 people. I think it is valuable. Companies have started to add ESG (environmental, social and governance) measures to remuneration policies — has the company achieved its environmental goals? Some companies even link employee satisfaction to remuneration. It will be interesting to see which companies are contributing to the economy (by creating jobs and circulating that money to other businesses) and to try to link this to performance outcomes.

We see these exorbitant remuneration packages everywhere. Researchers in Canada are calling it “Canada’s new Gilded Age” for CEOs. In South Africa, the typical CEO-to-worker pay ratio is more than 500:1, in India it’s between 150 and 300 to one, and in Brazil between 80 and 150 to one. South African CEOs rank high in the world (they were 7th in a 2022 Bloomberg survey). Our ratio is extremely high, by comparison, and we are already the most unequal country in the world.

We’re certainly not saying CEOs shouldn’t be compensated well — but we need to rethink how compensation is structured and what exactly it is that we reward. DM

Dr Salomé Teuteberg leads the Transforming Corporate Governance programme at the Labour Research Service in Cape Town.