South Africa: PPC has announced that when the next round of PPC salary adjustments takes effect in October 2014, company CEO Ketso Gordhan would earn only 40 times more than his lowest-paid worker.

When Gordhan took over as CEO in January 2013 he was earning 120 times more than his lowest-paid worker. However, the company's drive to reduce the earnings differential had reduced this to a multiple of 48. This followed Gordhan's US$96,370 pay cut in October 2013, while the remuneration of his top 60 managers was frozen so that the wages of the cement maker's 1200 lowest-paid workers could be raised.

Gordhan said that he would not take a pay increase in October 2014 and PPC's other executives would be awarded increases of about 4.5 - 5%, less than the usual 6.5%. This would allow the minimum total pay package at PPC to be hiked to nearly US$1060. According to Gordhan, the 40-times multiple was seen by many as 'a justifiable spread.'

The company's new black economic empowerment (BEE) deal, which gives employees 12% share ownership in the company, could generate as much as US$193m for PPC's employees over five years if share price targets of US$5.78/share are reached.

The company's new BEE deal is a restructure of its 2008 deal, which was designed around broad-based trusts but was complicated and costly. The new BEE deal involves the issue of ordinary shares to the PPC Phakamani Trust and the issue of a new class of perpetual preference shares, to be used to raise capital to fund the unwinding.