Sheng Siong’s employees will receive bonuses of up to 16 months, inclusive of the annual wage supplement (AWS), according to a leaked internal memo dated 21 January 2021.
The memo shows that eligible staff members are entitled to 20 per cent of the company’s profits before tax as variable bonus.
A portion of the bonus payout was given out last year, and the remaining payout will be paid in early March this year.
The Sheng Siong memo gave a breakdown of how much bonus its employees can expect to receive in total.
- Part-time workers – 4.68 months’ bonus
- General staff members – 8.36 months’ bonus
- Assistant supervisor to senior executive levels – 12 months’ bonus
- Assistant manager level and above – 15.82 months’ bonus
In contrast, each respective tier received 3.36 months, 5.73 months, 8 months, and 10.45 months’ bonus in 2019.
In the memo, the company said that the bumper bonus was to recognise that it had “performed extremely well as compared to previous years” in 2020.
In the first nine months of last year, Sheng Siong’s net profit jumped 83.3 per cent to S$107 million from a year ago and its revenue increased 44.6 per cent to S$1.07 billion.
This increment was “mainly because of elevated demand arising from Covid-19,” the listed firm said in a financial statement on its website.
Sheng Siong’s full-year figures are not yet available as its financial year ended on 31 December 2020.
In the first half of last year, supermarkets saw a strong boost in sales amid the pandemic, especially during the bout of ‘panic buying’ during circuit breaker.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index last year, Sheng Siong family’s combined fortune, based on their 57 per cent stake in the supermarket chain mainly held by Lim Hock Chee and his two brothers, has surged to US$1.1 billion (S$1.57 billion).
Lim has always been in Singapore’s top 50 richest, and his net worth has been gradually increasing each year — from S$345 million in 2012, to S$870 million in 2019.
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