It’s hard to imagine earning 239 times the average Aussie wage but Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore doesn’t have to.
Moore has held onto his spot as the highest paid individual boss of an ASX-listed company after he earned $18.71M in the past year.
Macquarie Group’s annual report showed Moore’s salary increased by nearly $700,000 last year from $18.4M.
Released on Friday, the investment bank’s report revealed most of Moore’s top executives also received significant pay rises.
Moore gets by on a mere $818,804 salary, however, complex share and bonus schemes boost that number.
Shares of $9M and short-term employee benefits of $4.3M are included in equity awards and more than $1M of his remuneration is paid into a profit-share arrangement.
A significant proportion of this is kept in Macquarie stocks and funds.
His pay increase is a direct result of the bank’s reported 2017 profit of $2.2 billion, up more than 7 per cent on the same time last year.
The woman tipped to eventually take over from Moore, asset management boss Shemara Wikramanayake was the only executive to take a pay cut last year but she still made $17.3M and is the second-highest paid executive at Macquarie behind Moore.
While Moore’s 2017 earnings top that of Australia’s big four bank chiefs, it’s still lower than his US counterparts but higher than some of his European peers.
It’s also less than what he made in 2007 – a staggering $32.9M ahead of the onset of the GFC.
Two years later, he was paid just $290,756 but it seems Moore is back on track.
The resignation of Australia Post director Ahmed Fahour just weeks after his $5.6M salary was revealed now seems silly in comparison.
Although public outcry and the fact he made 10 times more than Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ($507,338) may have had something to do with it.
Read more: Turnbull piles pressure on Australia Post CEO.