Bet365’s Denise Coates Best-Paid UK CEO with £277m

Denise Coates, the co-founder and CEO at Bet365, is the highest-paid executive in the UK for the third year running. The 52-year old online gambling company executive received £323 million in compensation, with her salary increased by more than £55 million since the previous year.

Record-Breaking Amount Paid to UK Executive

The UK media reported that according to the firm’s most recent accounts, Coates’ salary has increased to £277 million in the year to the end of March 2018. In the previous year, it was £220 million. To put it simply, Coates effectively earned £1.3 million per working day in the firm’s financial year. This is a record-breaking amount ever paid to an executive in a UK-based company.

Besides the salary, she also earned almost £50 million in dividends from Bet365. The accounts also show that the company’s before-tax profits were £791 million, which is £130 million more than in the previous year. The members of her direct family jointly own Bet365, but Denise Coates owns the half of it. Her brother John is a joint-CEO while their father is Bet365 chairman.

The UK’s Most Successful Woman

Coates is the best-paid boss in the UK for the third year in a row with her net worth estimated to be around £9 billion by Forbes magazine. Besides running one of the most successful companies in the UK, Coates also runs the Denise Coates Foundation donating to charities such as Oxfam and the Douglas Macmillan Hospice. In 2012, Bet365 CEO was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen for her contribution to community and business.

However, the news on her huge salary raised criticism from those who think that online gaming companies such as Bet365 are not addressing problem gambling and addiction enough. It is stated that pay package is higher than the amount the gambling industry in its entirety donates to initiatives that should combat the issue of problem gambling.

Bet365 Group was founded back in 2000 in Stoke-on-Trent, England, where its headquarters are still based. It is the largest private-sector employer in the city in Staffordshire with more than 4,600 employees.