News Corp boss earns $42m as highest-paid CEO of Australian-listed company
News Corp's chief executive has become the highest-paid CEO of an Australian-listed company, a new analysis of CEO pay has found.
Chief executives of ASX-listed companies are still being paid 55 times more than average workers in Australia but the gap is yet to widen to extremes seen overseas, according to the annual analysis from the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI).
Robert Thomson, who heads up the American media company News Corp, was paid nearly $42m in 2024, a $300,000 pay rise compared with the previous year, when he was the second-highest-paid Australian chief.
Jewellery retailer Lovisa soared to second for CEO pay after handing $39.5m to its recently departed chief, Victor Herrero, in 2024, despite being smaller than more than 140 other ASX-listed companies.
Macquarie Group's Shemara Wikramanayake took $29.8m in 2024, swapping places with commercial real estate giant co-founder Greg Goodman to become the third-best-paid Australian chief. If only ASX 100 companies are analysed, Wikramanayake is the highest paid CEO.
The disparity between what CEOs and average workers earned grew in 2024 compared with the year before, after ASX's top 100 companies gave their chief executives a near 14% pay rise on average in the 2023-24 financial year. The average worker's earnings rose 4.6% in the same period, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The gap has fallen since 2014, when chief executives were paid 70 times more than typical workers, the report found. Average CEO pay in 2024 was only slightly higher than it was in 2014, at $5.7m, whereas ordinary wages rose by nearly a third over the past decade.
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Local chiefs were paid 55 times more than average workers but Australia compared favourably to overseas, where CEO pay packets have soared, according to ACSI's executive manager of stewardship, Ed Johns.
'We're probably doing something right in Australia, where we've seen a real breakout in CEO pay in other countries,' he said.
Chief executives at the top 100 US companies were paid 348 times the median American employee in 2024, or more than US$33m (A$51m) on average, according to research from analytics firm Equilar using a different methodology.
The 100 biggest British companies paid their CEOs 78 times more than their median employees, the UK's High Pay Centre campaign group revealed on Monday.
Australian investors and company boards have protested against big bonuses put forward by numerous companies in recent years, including Qantas, Woolworths and AMP.
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But American enthusiasm for big pay packets was already lifting Australia's CEO pay levels and Australia's disparity could rise if investors stopped keeping watch for 'egregious' bonuses, Johns warned.
'We could see a breakout if that focus is lost, so in the upcoming reporting season we'll be watching really closely … to make sure that the pay is actually in line with investor expectations,' he said.
The analysis found the average CEO for a foreign-based, ASX 200 listed company was paid $600,000 more than CEOs of domestic ASX 200 companies, which ACSI attributed to 'North American pay practices'.
Two US companies made the top five: News Corp and American-headquartered health company ResMed, which paid its Australian head, Mick Farrell, $20m in 2024. Another three US-based businesses cracked the top 20.
'We wouldn't be surprised to see a number of those names continue to be represented in that list,' Johns said.
'[But] we don't want to see Australian companies follow that same path, particularly where these large bonuses don't actually match company performance.'
ResMed's Farrell had held the top-paid position the previous year, with $47m pay, but took a cut to $20m after shares in the company tumbled in value over the prospect weight loss drugs would eradicate the need for Resmed's sleep apnoea devices.
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