Executives at Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, will each receive an average of 13 million yen ($165,000) in annual pay, an outside panel decided on Sept. 7.
Executives at Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, will each receive an average of 13 million yen ($165,000) in annual pay, an outside panel decided on Sept. 7.TEPCO’s "compensation committee," consisting solely of outside directors, decided to allocate a total of 230.34 million yen in remuneration for the utility’s 22 directors and executive officers.The money will cover the one-year period from the company’s general shareholders' meeting of June 2012 to next year's shareholders’ meeting.The figure is less than 30 percent of the corresponding amount for the accounting year that ended in March 2011, the month the Fukushima nuclear crisis started to unfold.However, a simple comparison is misleading because TEPCO was reorganized into a "company with committees," as stipulated under Japan's Companies Law, in June 2012. The utility, struggling to come up with money to compensate victims of the nuclear accident, effectively came under state control and now has a much different management setup."Remunerations are compensation for the performance of duties," a TEPCO representative said. "We believe we should provide a certain amount of remuneration, partly from the viewpoint of securing personnel who are worthy of being entrusted with management."The pay for TEPCO President Naomi Hirose and 14 other executive officers, who are in charge of practical affairs of management, account for 195 million yen of the total. The remunerations for Chairman Kazuhiko Shimokobe and five other outside directors totaled 20.34 million yen.Shimokobe, however, turned down all of money allotted to him, TEPCO officials said.In the March 2011 accounting year, TEPCO’s 33 directors and auditors were allocated 864 million yen in remuneration, with 22 inside directors receiving 700 million yen, or 31.81 million yen each on average.Then Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and then President Masataka Shimizu were allotted about 72 million yen each.Following the Fukushima nuclear crisis, Katsumata, Shimizu and all executive vice presidents returned their pay from May 2011.