Germany Mulls Law on Managers' Salary Disclosure

German companies could face fines if their bosses refuse to reveal their annual salary before next summer as demanded by the government, Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said in a magazine interview published Thursday. Berlin has promised to pass a law to compel company chiefs to disclose their salary in a year if the executives fail to do so voluntarily. "Insufficient information in the balance sheets published in a company's annual report -- and that includes a legal obligation to disclose management board pay -- will be punished with fines," Zypries said in an interview published on the Internet site of Manager Magazin. German law currently requires listed companies only to publish the total sum of all salaries of management board members, not individual salaries. A code of conduct introduced in 2002 recommends that individual salaries also be disclosed, but only 11 of the 30 companies in Germany's blue-chip DAX index have done so. (AFP)