The Chief Executive and co-Founder of gambling firm Bet365 paid herself a record £199million last year, making her the highest-paid boss in Britain.
Denise Coates was given a £199million salary last year, as well as collecting £18million in dividends – The Telegraph reports. Coates founded the betting empire after borrowing £15million off the families already pre-existing betting companies.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2012, Coasted commented: “We mortgaged the betting shops and put it all into online. We knew the industry required big start-up costs but … we gambled everything on it. We were the ultimate gamblers if you like.”
Coates’s hefty salary is in response to positive growth in the company, after customers last year wagered £47billion, an increase of £10billion on the previous year. However, The Independent reports that Coates’ success has been met with some controversy, as her enormous salary is reflective of the number of lives harmed by gambling additions.
A spokesperson for Fairer Gambling commented: “As losses from Britain’s gamblers continue to spiral out of control, so has executive pay. The entire gambling industry donated just £8million to research, education and treatment last year. If these companies can afford to pay their executives millions of pounds a year, there is no excuse for such chronically underfunded treatment services.”
Oates answered this statement with one of her own, promising that Bet365 was “committed to developing an evidence-based approach to responsible gambling”.
She added: “To this end, the group continues to work with research partners on a number of projects to improve its methods of identifying harmful play and deliver more effective harm-minimisation interventions.”
David