High compensations of executives are attacked in China too

On Thursday Beijing in a move to calm public resentment at corporate high-fliers during the economic downturn announced its intention to put limits on the pay of senior executives at state-owned firms, like banks and insurance companies. 

In a statement posted on the Web site on Thursday the Ministry of Finance stated that compensation packages for top executive during the recently completed business year must not exceed 90% of what they earned in the prior business year. The MOF said executive salaries have been increasingly at a rapid clip in recent years, and some compensation packages were excessive. It also instructed companies to set up salary ceilings for other employees.

So the executives of the companies which posted drops in operating profit last year are to have their compensation levels reduced to 80% of what they earned in 2007.

As the report says, individual financial institutions have paid excessively high compensation to their executives, so the revenue gap between the executives and the average level of the society and other staff has widened significantly.