New | Tencent’s 2016 tech executive pay surpasses Apple, IBM

The operator of China’s biggest social messaging platform paid its top executive almost US$40 million in 2016, topping the highest executive salaries at Apple, Amazon or IBM.

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Tencent’s head office in Shenzhen. Photo Imaginechina

Published: 12:15pm, 16 Apr 2017Updated: 1:19pm, 17 Apr 2017

The stock price of Tencent Holdings have touched new heights, catapulting the operator of China’s biggest social messaging platforms into the largest Asian company by market capitalisation.

In the process, it is making company founder Pony Ma Huateng (馬化騰) very wealthy, as are members of his senior management.

Tencent paid an unidentified individual HK$311 million (US$40 million) in pay and bonus last year, a 13 per cent increase from the Hong Kong-listed company’s highest 2015 emolument of HK$274 million, according to company filings.

That far exceeded the HK$201 million that CK Hutchison Holdings paid last year to its co-managing director Canning Fok Kin-ning; Hong Kong’s “King of Employees” had been dethroned. The remuneration even exceeded those of Silicon Valley and other US technology companies, including Amazon, IBM, Apple, Twitter and Intel.

The pay at Tencent underscores how technology has upended the pecking order of the business world, where such traditional industries as banks, oil refiners and property developers have been pushed from the top of the most-valuable lists, replaced by Internet companies.

Baidu and Alibaba Group Holding, two of the largest US-listed Chinese internet companies, are not required to divulge their executive remunerations. Alibaba is owner of the South China Morning Post.