Rupert Murdoch’s pay last year from News Corp topped $32 million (or about £16 million) according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal , which is about to be acquired by Murdoch’s company.
His compensation was mostly salary and an annual bonus, plus stock and option grants. It also included just under a $7 million increase in retirement benefits – but this figure it was added was theoretical. His pension benefits come to just over $58 million.
Among the perks that Murdoch received was $327,000 for personal use of corporate aircraft (he is required to use company aircraft for safety reasons, the report added) and just under $12,000 for ‘car services’
In fact Murdoch is not, the report revealed, the highest paid News Corp executive. That title went to Peter Chenin, president and CEO of News Corp, whose compensation totaled $34 million.
The report added that Roger Ailes, head of the Fox News Channel, and the projected Fox Business Channel, due to be launched in the US later this month, received compensation of just under $11 million.
His perks however included a car allowance of just under $150,000 – almost $3,000 a week and almost ten times that of Rupert Murdoch, and ‘security services’that cost the company $55,000 or just over $l,000 a week. Although normally security is a ‘personal perk”, the company in Roger Ailes’s case considered it a business expense..
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