From a former mining hub in England's industrial north, Stoke-on-Trent has transformed into the residence of a billionaire. Reigning supreme is Denise Coates, the CEO and founder of Bet365—a betting powerhouse—and Britain's wealthiest woman.
Coates launched the online website at the turn of the millennium, and since then has attracted more than 90 million customers from across the world. The business is still based in the small city where Coates was born, but raked in £3.39 billion ($4.3 billion) in 2023.
According to its latest accounts, seen by Fortune, Coates took home a massive paycheck for her work in 2023. Documents published on Companies House say the business's top-paid director was awarded a sum of £220.6 million ($280 million).
A representative for the business confirmed to Bloomberg that Coates was the company's highest-paid director. Bet365 did not respond to Fortune's request for comment.
The figure was awarded despite the company's main sports and gaming division operating at a loss of more than £60 million ($76 million) for the year, but despite the losses, Coates's 2023 take-home is an increase on what she was paid last year: a nine-figure sum of $271.7 million.
But the good times for Coates don't stop there.
In the year to March 2023, the company paid out exactly £100 million ($127.4 million) in dividends.
As the company's majority shareholder—with a stake of 58.3%—the CEO would have had a further boost in the region of £50 million ($63.7 million), bringing her total compensation package to approximately £270 million ($344 million).
According to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, Coates has received approximately £1.5 billion in salary and dividends over the past decade.
More than the prime minister—and Big Tech chiefs
The accounts therefore reveal that Coates—certainly for the past few years—is earning more than her nation's prime minister and a handful of Big Tech CEOs to boot.
Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is entitled to a salary of up to £198,661 ($252,700) a year, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai's most recent compensation package was $226 million.
Likewise, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg notoriously is paid just $1 in salary, with Meta’s proxy statement for 2023 revealing its founder and CEO also didn’t partake in the company’s bonus scheme.
Zuckerberg was also not awarded any further equity in Meta “because [the business’s] compensation, nominating, and governance committee believed that his existing equity ownership position sufficiently continued to align his interests with those of our shareholders.”
However, Zuckerberg’s compensation for 2022 did come to more than $27 million, the statement added, as a result of Zuckerberg’s security program.
In a proxy statement released in April 2023, it was revealed that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took home $1,298,723 in 2022. The total is made up of a salary of $317,500 and $981,223 in 401(k) payments and additional security costs.
The seven-figure sum indicates a more than 99% cut from the long-term compensation package outlined for Jassy the year before, when he was awarded $212 million in stock to be vested over 10 years.
Meanwhile over at Microsoft, chairman and CEO Satya Nadella received $54,946,310 in 2022. That’s up from $49,858,280 the year prior courtesy of an increase in stock awards.
However, with Coates's fortune expected by Bloomberg to drop 40% to approximately $4 billion as a result of Bet365's losses, the trend of Coates outearning her Silicon Valley rivals may not last for long.
