Highest-paid exec at tech giant Tencent made $56 million in 2016

Want to work in a company that pays its employees and executives the best?

In the past, the tech giants of Silicon Valley, including Apple, Facebook and Google, would be foremost on most people's minds. But now, it might be better to look closer to home.

In a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Chinese Internet giant Tencent revealed that one of its executives received a whopping HK$311 million (S$55.78 million) in pay and bonus in 2016.

By comparison, CNBC reported that the highest-paid executive at Amazon, Andrew Jassy, made US$35.61 million (S$49.67 million) in total compensation; while Apple's top-paid executive, Angela Ahrendts, was paid "just" US$22.9 million last year.

According to the South China Morning Post, the amount also exceeded the HK$201 million (S$36.05 million) that Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong Hutchison Holdings paid to its co-managing director Canning Fok, who is Hong Kong's highest-paid employee.

Tencent did not reveal the identity of the highest-paid individual. However, its filing did show that its next three highest-paid individuals received compensation packages of between HK$231 million and HK$263 million.

Meanwhile, Tencent's founder and CEO, Pony Ma - despite not being the best-paid in the company - seemed satisfied with his 18 per cent pay hike last year. His total pay for 2016 was 39 million yuan, up from 32.8 million yuan the year before.

Ma has an estimated net worth of US$26.8 billion (S$37.38 billion), and was ranked 31st in the world and 3rd in China in Forbes' billionaires ranking.

Tencent, which is based in Shenzhen, is one of China's largest companies and operates web portal QQ.com as well as instant messaging platform WeChat. It also owns a stake in e-commerce platform JD.com.

However, the company made headlines for the wrong reasons earlier this year, when a video surfaced online of employees participating in a sexually suggestive party game at a company event.

Read also: Tencent apologises for getting female employees to perform sexually suggestive games at company event