‘I’ve never, ever, ever asked for a raise’, says Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi

Former PepsiCo boss Indra Nooyi has claimed that she has never sought a pay hike throughout her career, adding that she found it “cringeworthy.” Nooyi, one of the few women to run an S&P 500 company, further claimed that she denied one during the 2008 financial crisis. “I’ve never, ever, ever asked for a raise,” the ex-PepsiCo CEO was quoted by Bloomberg as saying. She further added, “I find it cringeworthy. I cannot imagine working for somebody and saying my pay is not enough.”
 
“I never asked my board to give me more money. In fact, one year the board gave me a raise and I said, ‘I don’t want it.’ They said, ‘Why not?’ It was not right after a financial crisis and I said, ‘I don’t want the raise,’” she mentioned.  In her recently released memoir My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future, the Indian-American corporate boss laments the fact that women hold only 26 per cent of corporate board seats in the US.
 
“In my view, companies should consider setting term limits on board members of fifteen years and a mandatory retirement age of 72. Immediately, they could also expand boards by one or two members to make room for qualified people who better understand the issues facing working women and young families,” she wrote in her book.
 
Since Nooyi’s tenure at PepsiCo got over, pay packages of CEOs have only risen and only five of the 100 top-paid American executives were women. Only 31 women run S&P 500 companies and this number was even lesser when Nooyi left PepsiCo back in 2018.
 
Nooyi wasn’t close to the top for executive pay at public companies in the US in her final year as the CEO of PepsiCo. Oracle’s Safra Catz was the highest-paid female CEO that year, according to Bloomberg’s ranking of executive compensation. Catz came 33rd on that list in 2018.

Edited by Mehak Agarwal

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