Cognizant CEO Francisco D'Souza takes $12 mn pay

New York: Cognizant chief Francisco D'Souza saw only a marginal rise in his pay package at USD 12.03 million last year as his performance-linked cash incentive fell significantly.

The US-based firm, which has a large part of its 2.21 lakh-strong workforce in India, did not award any restricted stock units (RSU) to D'Souza in 2016 and the same would be given in the first quarter of this year.

In 2016, D'Souza received USD 8.25 million in compensation that included salary (USD 664,000), annual cash incentive (USD 450,000) and other components like PSU, as per a regulatory filing.

Coupled with RSUs worth USD 3.77 million that were to be awarded to D'Souza in the first quarter of 2017, his total package came to USD 12.03 million in 2016 compared to USD 11.95 million in the previous year.

Cognizant said the timing of annual RSU grants has been changed in order to "align with the timing of the company's other annual equity grants and other annual compensation decisions by the Compensation Committee".

D'Souza saw the annual cash component falling by 42 per cent to USD 450,000 in 2016 from USD 778,000 in the previous year. Cognizant — which competes with Indian IT players like TCS and Infosys — had posted a 4.3 per cent decline in net profit to USD 1.55 billion in 2016.

Its annual revenues stood at USD 13.49 billion, up by 8.6 per cent over previous year, after slashing its growth forecast thrice during the year.