Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary sees base pay more than double to €1.2m per year

Ryanair group chief executive Michael O’Leary saw his base pay more than double to €1.2m – or just over €23,000 per week – in his latest pay deal with the airline.

The carrier’s 2023 annual report shows Mr O’Leary received an overall pay package of €2.7 million in the 12 months to the end of March this year.

Mr O’Leary’s fiscal 2023 package was made up of base pay of €500,000 plus a bonus of €425,000 or 85 per cent of the maximum bonus allowed.

Mr O’Leary’s package also included a €1.78m non-cash, technical accounting charge for 10 million unvested share options granted under his contract.

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The pay package for the outspoken airline boss was down marginally on the €2.76m pay package for fiscal year 2022.

Mr O’Leary’s new deal, agreed last December, with Ryanair extending to July 2028, commenced on April 1st of this year and the annual report discloses that Mr O’Leary’s annual base pay has increased by 140 per cent to €1.2 million.

The annual report shows that under the new deal, the chief executive’s maximum potential annual bonus is 50 per cent of his base pay compared to 100 per cent in the previous contract.

The contract to 2028 extends the vesting date for 10 million share options granted to Mr O’Leary provided the airline reaches set profit and/or share price targets during that time.

In his message to shareholders, Mr O’Leary stated that the airline faces “significant funding challenges” with further bond repayments in August 2023, September 2025 and May 2026 after completing a bond repayment of €850 million in March of this year.

Mr O’Leary said that Ryanair also expects to fund more than €2.8 billion of capital spend in the current year as the airline’s capital spend peaks under its current order for Boeing’s so-called Gamechanger aircraft, as it refers to the plane originally branded the 737-Max.

He said: “Because interest rates have risen dramatically over the last 18 months, we are determined to pay down these bonds as they fall due, while still funding as much of our ambitious capex as possible, from internally generated cashflows.”

Mr O’Leary added that “once we are confident that we can fund all of these very substantial commitments, the Board will then focus on restarting modest returns to our shareholders, who supported Ryanair during the Covid pandemic”.

Mr O’Leary stated that the other significant challenge facing the airline is the cost of fuel and the airline expects its fuel bill, with fleet growth, to jump from less than €4 billion in fiscal 2023 to over €5 billion in the 12 months to the end of next March.

The annual report shows that despite Ireland’s comparative small population, in the 12 months to the end of March 2023, Ireland was Ryanair’s fourth-largest market as revenues increased by 179 per cent from €229.6m to €640.4m.