UPDATE 2-DBS chief Gupta's pay climbs 13% to $11.4 million as bank profit soars

(Adds Gupta quote in fifth paragraph)

By Yantoultra Ngui and Anshuman Daga

SINGAPORE, March 9 (Reuters) - DBS Group Chief Executive Piyush Gupta earned S$15.4 million ($11.4 million) in 2022, a 13% increase in what was a banner year for Southeast Asia's biggest lender.

That included a cash bonus of S$5.8 million, his salary of S$1.5 million as well as deferred pay, the Singaporean bank's latest annual report showed on Thursday.

The big payday for Gupta, 63, comes after DBS logged record net profit of S$8.2 billion last year, up 20% on the year, as banks reaped the benefits of higher interest rates.

DBS's return on equity (ROE) jumped to a record 15% last year and to 17.2% in the fouth quarter. The bank also increased dividend payouts.

"We expect that as our digital transformation becomes more pervasive, an ROE of 15% is sustainable if interest rates do not return to the unusually low levels seen during most of the past decade," Gupta said in the annual report.

One of Asia's highest paid bank CEOs, Gupta still lags Macquarie Group's Shemara Wikramanayake who earned A$25.8 million ($17 million) in the year ended March 2022.

By comparison, the chief executives of HSBC and Standard Chartered whose shares have long underperformed banking peers, are paid less.

Noel Quinn, head of Asia-focused HSBC, has seen his pay package jump 14% to 5.6 million pounds ($6.6 million) from a year earlier, while StanChart CEO Bill Winters' total pay rose 15.7% to 5.5 million pounds from a year earlier. ($1=1.3544 Singapore dollars) ($1 = 1.5135 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Yantoultra Ngui and Anshuman Daga; Editing by Neil Fullick and Edwina Gibbs)