Indian rupee vs dollar
Indian rupee vs dollarReuters file

The top three mutual fund (MF) houses of India -- ICICI Mutual Fund, HDFC Mutual Fund and Reliance Mutual Fund -- have disclosed the salaries paid to their top managers for the first time. The disclosure follows guidelines issued by capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on March 18, 2016.

HDFC Mutual Fund's chief Milind Barve received a total annual remuneration of Rs. 26.21 crore for 2015-16. A large portion came from exercise of ESOPs previously granted to him.

Prashant Jain, executive director and chief investment officer (CIO), earned Rs 6.16 crore as salary component and Rs 16.33 crore in the form of ESOPs, PTI reported.  The ESOPs were granted over the period of 2008-2013.

The agency also said that 38 managers at HDFC MF got remuneration over Rs. 1 crore during the year.

Sundeep Sikka, the chief of Reliance MF, received Rs. 13.74 crore, including Rs. 10 crore as a one-time payout, while Sunil Singhania, CIO (equity investment) received Rs. 8 crore, inclusive of a "significant" one-time amount, added the PTI report. Overall, Reliance MF paid Rs. 41.5 crore to its top executives.

Nimesh Shah, managing director at ICICI MF, took home Rs. 5.4 crore, while S Naren, CIO, received a remuneration of Rs 4.75 crore. At ICICI MF, 15 managers got annual remuneration in excess of Rs. 1 crore during 2015-16.

ICICI MF is the largest fund house followed by HDFC MF and Reliance MF.  

Besides payments to distributors, the SEBI had also asked MFs to disclose executive salaries if they were equal to or above Rs. 60 lakh per annum or Rs. 5 lakh in cases where the manager was employed for a part of the financial year. The disclosures were to be made within one month from the end of the financial year. This was later recently extended to two months.

The combined assets under management (AUMs) of 44 registered MFs stood at Rs. 13.53 lakh crore as on March 31, 2016.

MFs added over 59 lakh folios during the year to take the tally to 4.77 crore at the end of the financial year, according to an update by CRISIL Research.

[1 lakh = 100,000 | 1 crore = 10 million | 100 crore = 1 billion]