For the second year in a row, Lenovo chief Yang Yuanqing has made the decision to redistribute his annual bonus among company employees. The $3.25 million bonus will be shared with approximately 10,000 staff members in China and 19 other countries.
Between 85 and 90 percent of the redistributed money will go to Chinese laborers who are not eligible to receive bonuses. In China, the roughly $325 payment is comparable to an average urban worker’s monthly salary.
“Most are hourly manufacturing workers,” said a Lenovo spokeswoman, Angela Lee, according to USA Today. “As you can imagine, an extra $300 in a manufacturing environment in China does make an impact, especially to employees supporting families.”
Lenovo overtook Hewlett-Packard in the second quarter of 2013 to become the world’s number one supplier of personal computers. Lenovo, which maintains head offices in both Beijing and North Carolina, also became the world’s fourth largest smartphone and tablet producer during the April-June quarter. The company posted annual revenue of $34 billion – managing to ship 52.4 million PCs in the twelve months preceding March 31.
“Yang has expressed interest in further growth by acquisition and the company is speculated to be considering deals with struggling smartphone producers BlackBerry Ltd. and HTC Corp,” reported USA Today.
Last year, Yang made $14.6 million including bonuses and incentives. He also owns 744 million shares of Lenovo – about 7.1 percent of the company’s current stock – valued at $720 million. Lenovo employs more than 35,000 people around the globe.
“[Yang] believes that he has the responsibility as an owner of the company, and the opportunity as our leader, to ensure all of our employees understand the impact they have on building Lenovo,” said Gina Quo, Lenovo’s senior vice president of human resources, in a memo to staff.
The disparity between executive pay and the average employee’s salary had grown exponentially in the last 60 years. According to HuffingtonPost, the average ratio of CEO-to-worker pay was 204 last year. That figure has grown by 1000 percent since 1950.
Yang isn’t the only CEO with a propensity for generosity. Oleg Deripaska, the CEO of the world’s largest aluminum production company, gave last year’s $3 million bonus to 120 employees. Lord Wolfson, a U.K. retail company CEO, passed his $3.7 million bonus to workers last April.
On the other hand – Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman still received a cool $15.4 million last year, after the company posted annual losses. No word on whether she shared any of that sum with workers.