Tech pays, and Tencent president Martin Lau’s payslip shows how much
The former Goldman Sachs banker’s pay packet doubled on the back of a 100 per cent jump in the internet giant’s share price
It pays handsomely to be in the tech business, and Martin Lau Chi-ping is proof.
The president of internet giant Tencent Holdings took home a whopping 237 million yuan (HK$296 million, US$38 million) in 2017, nearly double the 122.10 million yuan a year earlier, according to the company’s annual report.
Lau’s hefty pay rise was largely due to the increase in Tencent’s stock price, which more than doubled in 2017 and made it the first Chinese tech company to reach a market value of US$500 billion, joining a global elite club that includes Apple, Alphabet, and Facebook.
But Lau, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was not the highest paid employee at Tencent. According to the annual report, two unnamed individuals made nearly 382.7 million yuan and 344.7 million yuan respectively.
To put Lau’s pay in perspective – he earned about 1,600 times more than the city’s average worker, whose median income was HK$15,500 (US$1,975) per month in 2016, according to government figures. It would take about 4.4 years for an average Hongkonger to earn what Lau earns in a day.
The average monthly pay for employees in China’s internet technology sector was 9,495 yuan in 2016, the highest among all industries, according to a survey by job recruitment site Zhilian Recruitment.