33 of 42 CEOs of companies wholly owned by the state earn more than the Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
While the Prime Minister last year earned 1.7 million kroner, the state-owned Gassco company chief executive Brian Bjordal earned 8.1 million kroner, reports newspaper Aftenposten.
An overview paper has shown that three out of four senior executive of state-owned companies earn more than the Prime Minister.
Dag Mejdell of Norway Post and Statkraft’s CEO, Christian Rynning-Tønnesen, topped the ”podium” with almost 7.6 million kroner each in revenue.
In state-owned domestic companies such as Statoil, Hydro and Telenor, CEOs earned even better. Hydro’s Svein Richard Brandtzæg collected 18.2 million kroner, including pension contributions.
The Parliament’s ‘ownership report’ states that government’s executive pay should be competitive, but not lead.
Harald Dale-Olsen at the Institute for Social Research says it is difficult for the state to have a different executive remuneration policy to private companies in the same industry.
‘They recruit and compete for managers in the same market, so the industry therefore pays better wages than its owner’, he points out.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
