Paul Dacre’s pay and bonus package soared by 25% during 2014, taking the total remuneration of Britain’s best-paid newspaper editor to £2.4m.
The editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online received an extra £1m this year – double his usual £500,000 annual salary supplement – on top of basic salary and fees of £1.38m.
Along with £34,000 in taxable benefits – including a company car with taxable value of £15,000, car allowance of £10,000, fuel benefit of £6,500, and medical benefits of about £3,000 – this pushed his total remuneration for the year up to £2.41m, up from £1.84m in 2013.
Details of Dacre’s pay were included in Daily Mail & General Trust’s annual report published on Monday. DMGT said that during the past six years since Dacre’s contract was last agreed “Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday significantly out-performed the market; MailOnline has become the worlds most visited English language newspaper website with a major presence in the US; and Metro is one of the world’s biggest free newspapers”.
Dacre, 66, has edited the Daily Mail since 1992 and was made editor-in-chief of DMGT’s national newspaper operation in 1998, following the death of his predecessor, Sir David English.
Already working beyond the company’s normal retirement age, Dacre has agreed to stay on at the title under a new contract. Lord Rothermere, DMGT chairman, revealed in a Tatler interview in October 2013 that Dacre – who had been on a rolling one-year contract due to expire on his 65th birthday in November that year – had agreed to a stay on with a new pay deal.
More details of this arrangement are revealed in DMGT’s annual report. Noting that the “Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday continue to face a challenging print newspaper market and this has required strategic focus on operational efficiencies and a more integrated approach across the business” the document said DMGT had requested that Dacre’s “remuneration be more directly linked to the overall success of the business”. This means the editor has agreed to forgo a minimum 5% pay rise and an annual bonus of at least £500,000 from 2015.
Instead, Dacre has been awarded a 3% increase in his basic salary of £1.38m and in future, in line with other executive directors, he will receive an annual award under the company’s 2012 long-term incentive plan. Vesting after three years, this awards scheme entitles Dacre to bonuses worth 70% of salary if he achieves certain strategic objectives.
Dacre’s pay roughly matches that of the Mail’s proprietor, Lord Rothermere. The peer, the company’s chairman, received a total package worth £2.4m for 2014, up marginally from £2.3m the previous year, including an annual bonus of £833,000 plus a further £438,000 under the company’s long-term incentive plan.
Martin Morgan, DMGT chief executive, took home £2.021m in total, down from £2.949m in 2013. His remuneration included a £514,000 annual bonus and a £175,000 payment under the long term incentive plan.
