bet365’s Coates is UK’s Best Paid Executive

By Simon Wright, Last updated Jan 26, 2021

bet365’s Denise Coates has been revealed once again as the UK’s best paid boss and executive, with it being revealed she was paid £323m in the year ending March 2019, according to accounts published by the Stoke based gambling giant.

Denise Coates who along with other family members own bet365, was paid in total £277m during the financial year ending March 2019, excluding dividends, with dividend payments taking the amount to £323m. As increase of £57m excluding dividends, on 2018.

Coates currently owns approximately half of the shares in bet365, with the remainder being held by other members of her family, with the gambling firm reporting profits of £791m before tax, for the year ending 2019. An increase on the figure of £661m before tax the previous year.

The Coates family also own the football club Stoke City, which play at the bet365 Stadium, with the  football club posting a loss of £8.7m in their last set of published accounts.

According to Luke Hildyard of the High Pay Centre, a body and ‘think tank’ that monitors income, the timing of Coates’s income derived from bet365 looked cynical, coming just days after the UK held a General Election. With Hildyard commenting: “This looks like cynical timing, sneaked out straight after a general election campaign where excess wealth, taxes on the rich and the vast gap between those at the top and everybody else have been key issues.”

“Business success should be incentivised and rewarded, but a payment a fraction of this size would still afford a lifestyle beyond the wildest dreams of most people.” 

No doubt there will also be opinions coming from Responsible Gambling charities and initiatives on the view of the payments made to Coates during the past year….

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