Indian Firms Pay a Premium for Expat Execs

We just blogged yesterday about CIOs who are among the highest-paid execs at their companies, with that number rising from 2006 to 2007, according to Baseline's annual survey. (They are working hard for their money, with more than half of them holding down another title in addition to CIO.)

Yet Janco's mid-year 2007 IT Salary Survey found that compensation for more "typical" CIOs -- while certainly nothing to sneeze at, ranging from $169,504 to $174,979 -- remained flat from the previous year.

One place where senior executive salaries are rising steeply is India. And Indian firms are paying a premium to lure managers from other countries.

Indian companies are so eager to hire execs in BPO, technology, R&D, pharma, engineering design and other fields, reports The Economic Times, that salaries for such folks are rising at a rate of 25 percent to 40 percent. Expat managers can make twice as much as their native counterparts, according to the article.

Yet India hasn't attracted as many senior managers as some other Asian countries like China, largely due to its strict laws and complicated procedures for obtaining work permits.

According to the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, there are some 30,000 expats working in India, compared to 100,000 in China and even more in Hong Kong and Singapore. The managing director of executive search firm Stanton Chase International told the Dallas Morning News last year that China was a popular spot for American executives wanting to add overseas experience to their resumes.

Wage inflation at all levels, along with a strengthening rupee, negatively affected the revenues of several of India's largest outsourcing firms in 2007's first quarter.