The kerfuffle over stock options for IndiGo’s boss
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Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, joint promoters of the company that runs India’s top airline IndiGo, have been at odds in recent years over various points of business practice. But one thing they evidently agree upon is InterGlobe Aviation Ltd’s compensation package for its chief executive officer (CEO) Ronojoy Dutta, who took charge in January 2019 and led the carrier through a severe bout of post-covid turbulence. Last year’s big disruption left the company with a net loss of over ₹4,659 crore in the first nine months of 2020-21, as reported, far worse than its ₹247 crore loss on revenues of about ₹35,756 crore in 2019-20. In those three quarters, Dutta was paid ₹8.2 crore, including a committed bonus of ₹3.75 crore. This payout, a clear drop from his previous year’s total of ₹17 crore, was widely taken as par for the course, apparently, but what provoked a rebellion among minority shareholders was an award of stock options that would let him buy 185,000 shares—25% next January, 35% a year after that, and the rest near the end of 2023—at an ‘exercise price’ of ₹765 each. In a company vote that ended on 10 April, most of its minority shareholders voted against this grant. It is another matter that Bhatia and Gangwal, who together own some three-quarters of its equity, had no trouble pushing it through.