Lenovo Yang Yuanqing paid 80 million yuan to reward front-line grassroots employees, and this year's cumulative cash out is more than 300 million

On March 31, Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group, released Lenovo Group's internal letter for the new fiscal year, in which he said that he decided to voluntarily give up the long-term incentive of 80 million yuan that the company had previously granted him to reward front-line grassroots employees.

The upstream news (newspaper mailbox: [email protected]) reporter learned that this is not the first time that Yang Yuanqing has rewarded employees out of his own pocket. In 2012 and 2013, he set up the "Yuanqing Special Award" with three million US dollars, each of which covered nearly 10,000 grassroots employees of the group. On March 31, Lenovo Group released its 2021 financial report, which showed that Lenovo's net profit increased by nearly 50% throughout the year last year.

It is reported that Yang Yuanqing's salary in Lenovo Group includes basic salary and long-term incentives. Long-term incentives are tied to the company's performance.

In recent years, the performance of Lenovo Group has grown steadily, and Yang Yuanqing's personal salary has also risen. According to the previous Lenovo Group prospectus, since 2009, Yang Yuanqing's annual salary in the next three fiscal years was 103.1 million, 171.5 million and 177.2 million yuan, respectively. At the beginning of the year, according to the announcement of Lenovo Group, Yang Yuanqing sold Lenovo shares for four consecutive days, roughly estimating that the cumulative cash out was 375 million Hong Kong dollars (about 304 million yuan).

Yang Yuanqing himself has caused controversy over the high salary, to which he replied that his salary is determined by the compensation committee, "For myself, I can't take a lower salary than my American employees, Subordinates of the United States, and American executives. ”

▲ Yang Yuanqing once caused controversy over his high salary. Image source/network

Twice rewarded employees out of their own pockets

On the morning of April 1, some Lenovo employees sent an email to the upstream news reporter, and the content was a screenshot of the internal letter. "In particular, I would like to mention a group of behind-the-scenes heroes, which are front-line grassroots workers such as workers who always stick to their posts in order to keep the company's lifeline continuous... As a tribute to them, I decided to voluntarily forgo the long-term incentive of 80 million yuan that the company had previously granted me, and the company agreed to distribute it as a special reward to these colleagues. Yang Yuanqing wrote in an internal letter.

"Everyone is very happy, I think Yuanqing is doing great, and the front-line employees of the factory are worth it." The above-mentioned interviewed employee told the upstream news reporter that as an old employee, although she has not had direct contact with Yang Yuanqing, she greatly appreciates Lenovo's corporate culture: "(Internal) will not be called 'total', it is directly called Yuanqing, there is no clear division between superior and subordinate, all are like-minded friends working together, very relaxed, very happy." The employee stressed.

According to the data, Yang Yuanqing was born in 1964 in Hefei, Anhui Province. After graduating from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1986, he obtained a master's degree in computer science from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1989 and joined Lenovo Group in the same year.

Yang Yuanqing is not the first time to reward employees out of his own pocket. In early July 2012, Yang Yuanqing took out 3 million US dollars from his bonus to reward nearly 10,000 grassroots employees, and many grassroots employees reported receiving a "Yuanqing Special Award" of nearly 2,000 yuan.

According to media reports in 2012, Qiao Jian, senior vice president of Lenovo Group and head of global human resources who participated in the board of directors at the time, revealed that in Yang Yuanqing's view, he personally received this bonus for front-line grassroots employees, so he decided to share this money with ordinary employees in the form of special bonuses.

In 2012, there will be two conditions for winning the "Yuanqing Special Award", one is that employees must be hired before April 1, 2012, and the other is that they must be front-line grass-roots employees, such as production line workers, supervisors, assistants and call center operators. Qiao Jian said that after calculations, Lenovo Group has nearly 10,000 such employees worldwide, and each person can win about 2,000 yuan.

In 2013, Yang Yuanqing took out a personal bonus of $3 million to reward nearly 10,000 grassroots employees.

The upstream reporter combed and found that before making a reward of 80 million yuan, Yang Yuanqing sold Lenovo stocks for four consecutive days from January 4 to 7 at the beginning of this year, with a total of 41.7393 million shares sold, roughly estimated that the cumulative cash out was 375 million Hong Kong dollars (about 304 million yuan), and Yang Yuanqing still held 1.155 billion shares after cashing out, accounting for about 9.59% of Lenovo Group.

Salary disputes

Earlier, Yang Yuanqing had attracted attention because of his high salary. At that time, there was a day trip to the Lenovo Science and Technology Innovation Board, Liu Chuanzhi's annual salary of 100 million yuan after retirement, Yang Yuanqing's annual salary was higher than Cook, and for a time, controversy was everywhere.

Yang Yuanqing himself said in an interview in 2016, "After we acquired IBM's personal computer, for a long time, the unification of the compensation system was a big confusion for us, because the domestic employees took a very low salary, and the employees we acquired were paid according to the standards of the international market and the US market. Our Board of Directors is also fully remunerated. He stressed that his salary is set by a professional remuneration committee.

Lenovo was once called "a product of the PC (personal computer) era", and in the second quarter of 2013, Lenovo won the title of the world's first PC for the first time. As the chairman and CEO of Lenovo, Yang Yuanqing has led Lenovo to run for more than 30 years. However, Lenovo has also been questioned for missing many times, and the criticism is that the scientific and technological strength is not strong enough, and the investment in scientific research is too low.

Yang Yuanqing also encountered many setbacks. Among them, the most well-known are the two acquisitions, namely Lenovo's acquisition of IBM System x server business and Motorola mobile phone business, some people question why Lenovo wants to acquire these basically abandoned businesses, lenovo is not a takeover man. In this regard, Yang Yuanqing explained that whether Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola business or IBM System x server business is in line with the company's strategic requirements, the reason for the merger and acquisition of Motorola business is because doing mobile phones is a large-scale industry, and direct acquisition can save more than 20% of patent costs.

Judging from the data released on March 31 this year, Lenovo seems to have come out of the trough. Lenovo officially released its 2021 full-year financial report. According to the financial report data, Lenovo's operating income last year was 489.872 billion yuan, an increase of 17% year-on-year, of which the net profit was 5.755 billion yuan, an increase of 48.78% year-on-year.

Looking back at 2019, at the Lenovo Global Oath Conference, Yang Yuanqing officially announced Lenovo's latest strategy, and in the next 10 years, the company will carry out a 3S strategic shift around "intelligence" (intelligent Internet of Things, intelligent infrastructure and industry intelligence). At the global oath ceremony the following year, Yang Yuanqing once again stressed that Lian wants to become a core supplier in the field of new infrastructure, and the industrial Internet, big data center, 5G network and artificial intelligence in the new infrastructure are just in line with the company's 3S strategy.

During the epidemic, the public's demand for remote office, online teaching, etc. has increased, and the demand for PCs behind this has grown very fast, which is also a good signal for Lenovo. Yang Yuanqing once said in an interview with the media that the public's demand for PCs will not stop at the epidemic period, which he believes is a continuous growth process.

For the problem that has been criticized for the problem of too low investment in scientific research, in the performance report on March 31, Legend Holdings said that in the next three years, it will reach the target of an average annual R&D investment of 20 billion yuan, and the number of R& D personnel has doubled to no less than 24,000 people, and the relevant work is steadily advancing, and 3.5 billion yuan has been invested in the fourth quarter of 2021, an increase of 38% year-on-year.

Upstream journalist Wang Jingjing