Top managers in Russia earning top money

With Russia's economy soaring there’s growing demand for qualified top executives in Russia. So top managers are asking for higher wages and are having no problem getting them.

“The companies compete for those people in a quite aggressive manner. We have situations where top managers would increase their annual compensation 200-300% in 2-3 years. That is quite extraordinary,” says Anton Derlyatka, a partner at Ward Howell.

According to Antal International, a recruitment agency in Russia, salaries in domestic companies are higher than at their Western counterparts that operate in the country:

“If you put it all together in an average, you could probably come to 10 – 20% that these salaries for top people are higher. You could also get 100-150% higher salaries in certain sectors where there is just a shortage,” says Michael Germershausen, Deputy Managing Director of Antal.

But the good news, Derlyatka says, is that a new breed of Russian top managers hase surfaced over the past few years.

“A new generation of management has appeared, which is not only motivated by big money, although that is a part of motivation,” adds Derlyatka.

According to the managers themselves, these things include building world-class companies from scratch:

“If a business is growing, and a manager is personally contributing to this growth, the reward, be it in the form of money or immaterial things, comes automatically,” pointed out Sergey Kalinin, Director of KR Properties.