CRH chief executive nets €11.2m for 2020

CRH chief executive Albert Manifold's total pay packet last year rose by 20 per cent to €11.2 million, among the highest annual earnings ever awarded to an Irish corporate executive. Mr Manifold was paid 166 times the average salary of a CRH worker last year, up from 145 times in 2019.

Mr Manifold’s salary and other fixed payments came to just over €1.46 million, although this was after he waived 25 per cent of his salary for three months during the pandemic. His fixed pay would have been more than €1.56 million. The CRH chief executive is in line for a 2.75 per cent increase on his base pay for 2021, while CRH staff across the group are to get a 3 per cent increase.

His remuneration included a pension payment of €612,000. More than 80 per cent of his pay packet last year was made up of performance-related elements, according to the remuneration report in the company’s latest annual report.

In addition to his salary, Mr Manifold received a €2 million cash bonus and about €6 million in performance incentives, including a €1 million payment tied to CRH’s share price performance.

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He also received €1 million in deferred shares. A rise in his incentive payments accounted for the bulk of Mr Manifold’s total pay packet growth.

Steep rise

Sean Murphy, CRH's outgoing finance chief, also recorded a steep rise in his pay packet last year, which rose from just over €3.1 million to almost €4 million. Mr Murphy, who has announced he will leave his post at CRH in 2021, got a cash bonus of €689,000 and almost €2 million in long-term incentives.

CRH, which reports its financial results in US dollars, recorded a 2 per cent drop in its revenues last year to $27.6 billion, but its earnings rose by 3 per cent and its full year dividend was increased by 25 per cent to 115 cents per share.

CRH last year employed an average of just more than 77,000 workers who were each paid an average of $80,571 (€67,417) including all benefits, with the chief executive’s total pay 166 times the average. In 2019, the average CRH employee was paid $76,684 (€64,149), with Mr Manifold receiving 145 times this.

According to calculations by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, in 2019 of the 70 FTSE 100 companies who disclosed their chief executive-to-average worker ratio, the median was 84 times.

Mr Manifold’s 2020 pay of €11.2 million is a multiple of most other Irish-based chief executives. In 2019, for example, the average pay of the chief executives of the 22 biggest Irish listed companies was €2.45 million, whereas Mr Manifold was paid almost four times that amount.