UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti was the best-paid CEO in the Swiss Market Index (SMI) in 2023 with a total salary of CHF14.5 million.
Keystone-SDA
The top bosses of the largest listed Swiss companies saw their salaries rise by an average of 5% last year. Average total remuneration packages rose to CHF 8 million ($9.2 million), according to a study by the Ethos Foundation.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
Ethos said last year’s growth figures were influenced by the salary of UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti. In 2023, he was the best-paid CEO in the Swiss Market Index (SMI) with a total salary of CHF14.5 million for a nine-month term of office.
+ What’s behind a CEO’s paycheck in SwitzerlandÂ
He was followed in second and third place by the CEO of Novartis with CHF13.3 million and the former CEO of Nestlé with CHF11.2 million. Overall, the total remuneration of SMI CEOs has risen by around a quarter over three years.
+ Top Swiss CEOs earn 143 times more than lowest paid staff
However, opposition to such salary increases has been growing, writes Ethos.
In 2024, 17.7% of shareholders rejected top managers’ remuneration demands at annual general meetings, compared to 13.8% in 2023 and 13.1% in 2022.
Translated from German by DeepL/sb
How we work
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
