Lessons learnt? Infosys may be willing to pay higher salary for the next CEO

Set to be headed by first CEO who's not a founding member, Infosys may be readying to loosen its purse strings in order to attract the best talent and hold on to whoever takes over from SD Shibulal.

The Economic Times quoted an unnamed source as saying that global executive search Egon Zehnder has been told not to split hairs over a couple of million dollars "if the talent is available".

While the exact salary that would be offered isn't known at present, the source was quoted as saying that it would match industry figures, something the IT company is not known for now.

The company has always been headed by former founding members, who have typically settled for a lower salary and remuneration in the form of stock options. In fact, Shibulal even took a pay cut in the 2014 fiscal year to take home a salary of just $26,113 (around Rs 16 lakh).

Interestingly, Stephen Pratt, the former head of utilities and resources for North America who resigned last year, made more than Shibulal and took home a salary of $2.11 million.

Even Shibulal's peers at competing companies such as Wipro and TCS take home a far higher salary.

However, Shibulal and his family aren't really complaining given their own about 2.2 percent of the company's shares, which earned them almost $20.57 million through dividends in the last fiscal, as this report in Mint shows.

Among those in the running for the top job at Infosys include former SAP executive Vishal Sikka, Francisco D'souza from Cognizant, Salil Parekh from Capgeminia and Shankar Annaswamy, the former MD of IBM India.

However, the front runner for the post is said to be Infosys man BG Srinivas who now heads a portfolio of businesses including financial services, insurance, manufacturing, engineering services, energy and communications, public services, strategic global sourcing and marketing and alliances.

Srinivas, incidentally, also was the second highest paid executive at the company in the 2013-14 financial year.

The once bellwether company has been struggling with attrition and low employee morale as it is going through a difficult management transition. The company had last year given two salary hikes in a bid to stem employee exodus. It recently said it gave a raise of 6-7 percent for the onshore staff and 1-2 percent for workers abroad. In addition, it has been giving employees incentives like promotions in order to boost morale and check attrition.