Is this Gambling Executive's salary sensible and appropriate?

[theking]

Gambling executive’s $281 million salary deemed not ‘sensible and proportionate’


The founder and boss of gambling company Bet365 earned a salary of around $281 million (£221 million) in the last financial year – ending March 26, 2023. The figure was described as not “sensible and proportionate” by one campaign group.

Denise Coates, the joint-chief executive and majority shareholder of Bet365, also earned at least 50% of the company’s $127 million (£100 million) in dividends on top of her $281 million salary, company accounts published on Sunday show.

Her base salary is an increase of about $10 million compared to last year, even as Bet365 made pre-tax losses of around $77 million (£60.2 million). The company accounts attribute the losses to “a significant increase in costs associated with entering into new markets.”

Bet365 did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The size of Coates’ salary – which makes her Britain’s highest-paid women and one of the highest-paid chief executives in the world, according to the BBC – has drawn criticism, particularly in light of the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

“People deserve to be rewarded for innovation and success but there’s a question of what’s sensible and proportionate,” Luke Hildyard, executive director of the High Pay Centre, said in a statement sent to CNN on Monday.

“Nobody becomes a multi-billionaire in isolation from wider society. In this case, the wealth depends on money coming out of gamblers’ pockets, the efforts of thousands of staff, plus wider factors like people having some disposable income, a secure and reliable internet network or all the infrastructure that goes into staging sports events.

“Ultimately, Britain’s prosperity depends on how the wealth our economy generates is shared. Pouring hundreds of millions of pounds more on top of billionaire fortunes every year isn’t a good way to maximise living standards and it over-values the contribution that the super-rich have made.”

[Hung_Low]

If you don't like it... don't work there. Better yet, don't use the service. She's not pointing a gun to your head to use her company's service.