DBS Group's CEO Piyush Gupta Takes $4.1 Million Variable Pay Cut, Cites Impressive Q4 Performance

DBS Group Holdings Limited, Singapore's largest lender, has announced that its Chief Executive Officer, Piyush Gupta, voluntarily took a 30% cut in variable pay amounting to SGD 4.1 million. This decision comes in light of the bank's robust financial performance, with net profit witnessing a two percent rise to SGD 2.39 billion (USD 1.78 billion) for the quarter ending December 31, according to a report by Bloomberg.

DBS Group stated that its net profit for the year had already surpassed SGD 10 billion, accompanied by a notable return on equity of 18%. Following this announcement, the company's shares experienced a surge of up to 2.7%.

The move to cut variable pay follows a ten-hour outage in March 2023 that affected DBS Group's digital services, drawing criticism from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The central bank labeled the disruption as 'unacceptable' and called for a thorough investigation into its root cause.

Piyush Gupta, who has been serving as the CEO and director of DBS Group since 2009, has played a pivotal role in the bank's expansion across India, Taiwan, and mainland China through strategic acquisitions and organic growth. Additionally, Gupta has strengthened the bank's wealth management business, making it one of the largest in Asia in terms of assets under management.

An alumnus of St Stephen's College in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, Gupta received the Public Service Star for his meritorious services to the nation in 2020. He was also honored with the 2023 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, the highest recognition by the Indian Government for the country's diaspora. Furthermore, Gupta was listed among the world's top 100 best-performing chief executives in the 2019 edition of "The CEO 100" by Harvard Business Review.