Manchester-based Autotrader Group’s boss Nathan Coe (pictured) and MEN and Liverpool Echo publisher Reach’s now-departed CEO Jim Mullen have topped the “biggest pay change for an executive whose role did not change mid-year” charts in this year’s Press Gazette UK News Media Rich List.
CEO Coe’s total remuneration jumped 133% to £3m, followed by Reach’s Mullen, whose compensation rose 121% to £1.2m. Autotrader’s chief operating officer Catherine Faiers and chief financial officer Jamie Warner were not far behind, receiving increases of 110% and 109% respectively at the publisher, whose shares hit an all-time high of 819p last May on half billion+ FY revenues ahead of the firm’s move into a 130,000 sq ft new office at Manchester’s Circle Square in January.
Coe also placed eighth on the overall exec pay list, with Mullen in 24th.
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Elsewhere on this year’s run down, the 50 businesses included collectively increased their revenue year-on-year by 3.3% in total while, of the 36 named executives this year, 25 are men and 11 are women. The three top-earning executives were all men, while the three bottom-earning ones were all women.
Like last year, the two top-paid media executives both worked for data and consumer information giant RELX, the biggest media business in the UK by turnover.
Chief executive Erik Engstrom took the top spot, receiving a pay packet of £13.5m (on fixed annual pay of £1.6m), while his chief financial officer Nick Luff was second on £7m. Both saw their total remuneration drop by 10% compared with a year earlier, however.
Engstrom was the second-best paid FTSE 100 chief executive in the UK in 2023, according to the High Pay Centre, behind only AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot.
They were followed by Stephen A Carter, the group chief executive of another B2B information source Informa, whose pay jumped 2% year-on-year to £4.2m.
ITV boss Carolyn McCall was the best-paid broadcast executive on the list, earning pay of £4.1m in 2024. The best-paid executive at a consumer print/text media organisation was an unnamed executive at Daily Mail publisher DMGT, which the Gazette noted is likely to be chief executive Tim Collier or chairman Lord Rothermere, with a £4m take home – a 38% drop on last year.
A dozen print or online publisher executives earned £1m or more, led by the top DMGT director, an unnamed executive at Telegraph Media Group (£2m), another at the Financial Times (£1.8m) and Economist Group chief executive Lara Boro.
