The CEOs of the large listed companies in Germany will have earned significantly more in 2025 than in the previous year.
According to calculations by the Handelsblatt Research Institute (HRI), the heads of companies from the leading DAX index received a total of 261.3 million euros in remuneration. According to “Handelsblatt”, that was 12.9 percent more than in the previous year. In 2024, salaries rose by around ten percent and in 2023 by two percent. In 2022, top managers even had to accept cuts.
According to the report, the increase last year was primarily due to special payments such as severance payments and the increasing orientation of remuneration towards the respective share price. Critics have long complained about the ever-increasing top salaries and the imbalance between the remuneration of top bosses and the workforce. Conditions would become “Americanized.” On average, each DAX boss received around 6.9 million euros in 2025. Seven of the top managers were paid more than ten million euros. The top earner was once again SAP boss Christian Klein. He received 16.24 million euros, which was less than the previous year with around 19 million euros.
According to an analysis by “Wirtschaftswoche”, Christian Sewing from Deutsche Bank (15.69 million), Roland Busch from Siemens (12.33 million), Oliver Bäte from Allianz (11.61 million) and Tim Höttges from Deutsche Telekom (11.55 million) followed in the places. Rheinmetall boss Armin Papperger is likely to be the newcomer of the year. Thanks to the armaments boom, he earned over 10 million euros, two and a half times as much as a year before and moved up to sixth place.
As in previous years, the HRI study is based on the compensation reports of 38 of the 40 DAX companies. The aircraft manufacturer Airbus and the diagnostics group QIAGEN are not included. Neither company has its registered office in Germany.
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