Bet365 Boss Gets 45% Pay Rise To Earn UK’s ‘Highest Ever Salary’

Denise Coates earned a rather large pay packet

The boss of the gambling company Bet365 has reportedly earned the highest salary ever in the UK after earning a 45 per cent pay increase. Denise Coates reportedly earned a £421m salary this year, not to mention the £48m she received in dividends. The 53-year-old joint chief executive of Bet365 has received one of the highest pay packages in UK history. This equates to Denise earning just over £1.2m each day, including weekends and bank holidays. Her total income of £469m is almost double that of the total amount of money Denise earned in the tax year ending in March 2019, which was approximately £277 million. In 2019, the 53-year-old boss still received the highest-paid salary in the UK. According to Bloomberg, Denise Coates is the "only woman among 17 U.K. billionaires on Bloomberg’s wealth index", which includes the likes of Richard Branson and Joe Lewis. Her latest earnings mean that Denise has accumulated around £1.3b since 2016 and was paid at a rate of £54,000 per hour. To put this in context, the joint chief executive reportedly earned 2,360 times more than the UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The gambling firm told the BBC that the arrangements were "fair and accurate." In the financial year ending March 2019, the billionaire donated £85m from the firm's funds to the Denise Coates Foundation. The previous year saw the gambling boss donate approximately £75m to the foundation. Denise founded the popular Bet365 website in the early 2000s in Stoke-on-Trent, after training to be an accountant and working for the family business.