Top executives' annual salary in China's listed companies saw a sharp increase last year due to the booming stock market, according to statistics by China Securities News.

A total of 1,254 listed companies, which announced their last year's performance report, paid out 2.2 billion yuan (US$280.34 million) to their top brass last year.

The average annual salary in 2006 was a record high of 162,800 yuan, up 18 percent year on year from 138,000 yuan in 2005.

Liang Jiaju, executive vice general manager of Ping An Insurance Company, listed in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, was paid the highest at 17.1 million yuan last year, topping all of China's listed companies in terms of annual wage.

Ping An also gave the most generous salaries to other senior executives. Last year it doled out 75 million yuan. The Bank of China came second with its senior executives' annual wage reaching 32.1 million yuan. Shenzhen Development Bank was third, with 29.3 million yuan.

The annual performance reports showed that the net profit of the aforementioned three companies reached just shy of 6 billion yuan, 42 billion yuan and 1.3 billion yuan respectively in 2006, a sharp increase of 80, 52 and 319 percent respectively year on year.

Senior executives at China Vanke Co Ltd, a real estate developer, earned a total of 16.1 million yuan last year. Its annual report showed its net profit soared to almost 60 percent to 2.2 billion yuan in 2006.

But those listed companies with poor performance only gave a modest pay to their executives, some earning as low as 50,000 yuan per year, far lower than the average.

The finance and insurance sectors gave out the highest salaries. The chairman of Shenzhen Development Bank was at the top of the pay list of executives of Chinese banks listed on the mainland stock market.

Frank Newman, a former United States deputy secretary of treasury earned almost 10 million yuan last year from the Shenzhen bank in southern China's Guangdong Province, according to the bank's annual report.

Three executives from China Merchants Bank and two from China Minsheng Bank are among the top 20 annual pay list of China's listed companies.

Shenzhen Development Bank's independent directors earned an average of 760,000 yuan.

By sectors, the finance and insurance, and electronic industries held the top two spots with the average annual pay of their senior executives reaching 757,600 yuan and 271,600 yuan respectively. The last two were textile and furniture sectors, with senior executives' average annual salaries of 115,600 yuan and 88,100 yuan respectively.

Guangdong Province, Beijing and Shanghai are the top three regions with the average annual wage of high executives in listed companies reaching 30,100 yuan, 27,200 yuan and 19,300 yuan respectively.

Among the 170 senior executives who earned more than one million yuan last year, only seven were from the small and medium-sized enterprises, most of which are private enterprises.

None of the top 100-listed companies who paid their senior executives top dollar have less than one billion yuan in total assets.

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