Top executives' pay slides up to a quarter

Chief executives of listed as well as family-owned companies in the country are under increasing pressure from shareholders and stakeholders alike.

While in some cases they are being sacked for lack of performance, in others they are being used as scapegoats for years of inertia. The result, however, is that there has been a more than average turnover in the CEOs of UAE firms in the recent past.

"Yes, we have seen a lot of cases in the recent past where CEOs have been let go," Panos Manolopoulos, Dubai-based Managing Partner Middle East of executive search consultants Stanton Chase International, told Emirates Business.