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You are > Home > Kerry Group chief is paid over €1.5m
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Thursday, April 23, 2009
Kerry Group chief is paid over €1.5m
By: Mary Murphy
KERRY Group directors were paid a total of €1,173,793 less in 2008 than in the previous year, despite a jump of almost most half a million euro in the personal package paid to its chief executive.
Payments to executive and non-executive directors amounted to €5,224,262 last year which was a drop from the €6,398,055 total in 2007. Kerry’s 51-year-old chief executive, Stan McCarthy, who took over the top job in January of last year, was paid €1,525,000 in 2008, official company figures confirm.
The package paid to Mr McCarthy, which includes a basic salary of €810,000, represented an increase of €125,000 on the 2007 earnings of former chief executive, Hugh Friel, who had been with the group since its formation before stepping down. The salary and bonuses paid to Kerry group chiefs have been slated by former Food Minister Ned O’Keeffe, who said the payments to Mr McCarthy were "absurd."
He called on the Kerry Group chief to hand back up to 70 per cent of the bonuses he collected in 2008 to show solidarity with farmers struggling to cope with the worse milk price in Europe.
"It is absolutely absurd that the chief executive of any company should be paid these kinds of salaries or bonuses," Mr O’Keeffe claimed. "I will be calling on the government to bring in legislation that will cap all salaries and bonuses at realistic figures," he added.
Other key earnings in Kerry Group last year included a package work €846,000 for group financial officer Brian Mehigan but, despite a basic salary of €460,000, he saw his earnings drop in by €46,000 from the previous year.
The chief executive of Kerry Group’s consumer foods division, Flor Healy, (46), earned a total of €896,000 last year, including a basic salary of €500,000, but his earning were down from €1 million in 2007.
Gerry Behan, president and chief executive of Kerry Ingredients and Flavours Americas, who joined the board as an executive director in May of last year, earned €575,000 in his first seven months in the job, including basic pay of €233,000. Former chief executive Denis Cregan, who stepped down in May 2008, was paid €456,000 which was down from €1,177,000 in the previous year.
The annual report also contained details of payment packages to non-executive members, including the 63year-old chairman of the company Denis Buckley who was awarded €209,000 which was €9,000 more than the previous year.
Other remuneration packages to non-executives included €110,000 to Michael Dowling, a former secretary general of the Department of Agriculture; €110,000 to Kevin Kelly, the former manager director of AIB Bank; €73,000 to former US Ambassador Michael J Sullivan; €53,967 to Denis Wallis, a director of Kerry Co-operative Creameries Ltd; €53,943 to
Desmond O’Connor who is chairman of the Kerry Cooperative Creameries Ltd and €49,456 to Eugene McSweeney. The remaining seven non-executive directors received packages worth €38,128 up marginally on the previous year.
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