Narayana Murthy's comeback: What's with the one rupee salary?

Yesterday, in what was definitely the biggest business leadership story in a while, NR Narayana Murthy made a comeback as Infosys chairman. While he will take formal office on Thursday, this coming week, yesterday's media interaction gave us some initial insight into how this new arrangement might work.

NRN in his signature humility said that his position would be to add value to CEO Shibulal's thinking. However, Rohan Murthy's presence, even if as Executive Assistant and the hint of more Catamaran (the fund the Murthy set up to) presence in the Chairman's office could be strong indication that new spaces or strategy will be aggressively sought.

But we have to ask - what's with the Rs 1 salary?! Why, take anything?

[caption id="attachment_834129" align="alignleft" width="380"] Employees talk as they stand next to flex board poster of Infosys founder Narayana Murthy. Reuters[/caption]

This might well have its roots in silicon valley - where well-known, extremely wealthy tech leaders chose it as a symbol when they were well-compensated in stock. Steve Jobs on his return, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google (since 2005) are good examples of folks who chose this route. Interestingly, Rohan Murthy owns more shares in Infosys than parents Narayana Murthy (23, 79, 672) and Sudha Murthy (73, 14, 660), making him a pretty wealthy executive assistant.

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Vikram Pandit on the other hand earned a $1 salary as a form of punishment when Citigroup was going through one of its worst times in corporate history.

'One dollar men' as they were called actually date back to executives in the US government who were trying to resuscitate the country after World War I.

We certainly hope that the 'one rupee men', give Infosys the necessary energy that it so desperately needs.

Here's a video of why Facebook's mark Zuckerberg takes a $1 salary: