REVEALED: WA’s best-paid executives of ASX-listed companies and how much they take home

Four in five of WA’s highest-paid bosses and executives were topped up with cash bonuses over the past 12 months as their rank-and-file workers laboured under rising cost-of-living pressures and slowing wage growth. The West Australian’s annual pay audit of WA’s top-100 ASX-listed companies by value found 82 per cent, or 99, of the 121 executives on million-dollar packages pocketed an average $399,324 cash bonus, in addition to potentially lucrative stock incentives. SEE THE FULL LIST BELOW The audit confirms the trends of recent years, with boards still increasing executive salaries, but in more modest increments, and pushing more rewards into at-risk stock incentives that vest over three to five years. That’s reflected in a 14 per cent jump in total pay accumulated by the top-50, from $148.2 million in 2023 to $168.9m this year. Eight bosses received a cash bonus of $1m or more after hitting their short-term performance targets, including Woodside Energy’s Meg O’Neill ($1.4m) South32’s Graham Kerr ($1.3m) and Mineral Resources’ Chris Ellison ($1m), who in recent months has been culling his company’s job numbers to slash costs. The trio were among 20 WA “salary millionaires” who earned more than $1m in fixed pay alone. Four of those are on $2m salaries, including Fortescue energy chief Mark Hutchinson and APM boss Mike Anghie. Ms O’Neill, who has run Australia’s biggest oil and gas company for the past three years, topped the best-paid list with total pay of nearly $7.4m, ahead of gold miner Northern Star Resources’ Stuart Tonkin ($7.3m) and Wesfarmers’ Rob Scott ($7.1m). On another lesser-disclosed measure, however, billionaire Mr Ellison came out at No.1, taking home $13.3m when the soaring value of his stock rewards are taken into account. All up, the 121 executives earned $254.8m in total remuneration. The 25 best-paid received $107.5m, or an average of $4.3m - more than 40 times Australia’s average annual adult earnings of just over $100,000. The top-50 averaged $3.2m. Many company boards have listened to shareholder feedback by paying at least some of their executives’ short-term bonuses in at-risk stock rewards to better recognise longer-term performance. However, bonuses remain a source of contention, with many investors demanding even tougher performance measures from their companies on the basis that the payments are still too easy to get. Recent research by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors found the median ASX 100 company chief executive received 66.3 per cent of their maximum bonus. Executive pay broadly is also a sticking point with Australians, with community concern over what is perceived as excessive remuneration stoked by falling trust in major companies in the wake of a string of scandals, regulatory prosecutions and blunders in recent years. The audit is based on so-called statutory pay disclosed in the WA companies’ last annual reports for executives still employed at balance date. Unlike take-home, or “realised” pay, which is a less-used but more accurate gauge of actual remuneration paid in a year, statutory pay values equity grants at the date of issue. However, there is no guarantee that the performance shares, options or rights awarded will vest and provide any benefit to the executive. As an example, Ms O’Neill’s take-home pay for the 2023 calendar year was recorded by Woodside at $4.46m, well below her statutory reading of nearly $7.4m because none of the stock granted to her under the company’s incentive schemes vested during the 12 months. Conversely, billionaire Mr Ellison’s statutory pay went backwards because of value “reversals” on incentive stock granted in previous years that was no longer now expected to vest. However, his “realised” pay for the 2024 financial year catapulted to $13.3m, because the take-home measure captures the market value of a swag of performance rights that vested during the year into MinRes’ rising share price. Similarly, senior MinRes lieutenants Mark Wilson and Mike Grey also had big years, pocketing $10.4m and $9.7m respectively on the “realised” basis. The 121 millionaire executives included only 15 women, but female representation has doubled over the past four years. Outside of Ms O’Neill, the female inclusions are in non-CEO roles, including Fortescue director Elizabeth Gaines, South32 chief financial officer Sandy Sibenaler, IGO CFO Kate Bozanic and Woodside’s Australian chief operating officer Liz Westcott. The top-25 was skewed by big licks of stock issued to executives in mining juniors Latin Resources, FireFly Metals and Spartan Resources. Without the cash resources of their bigger peers, juniors typically pay relatively small salaries while incentivising their small management teams with multimillion-dollar stock grants. It’s a powerful recruitment tool given the windfalls that can eventuate when share prices grow on favourable mining cycles and rising commodity prices as the companies transition from explorers to producers. Chris Gale, managing director of the South American-focused Latin Resources was credited with $4.3m in share rights in 2023, while FireFly boss and former Bellevue Gold chief Steve Parsons’ pay package was dominated by $4.13m of performance rights as the company took on Canada’s Green Bay copper project. Simon Lawson, the interim executive chair of Spartan Resources, was beefed up with $3.61m of incentive stock, much of it linked to 84.5m rights granted across the group last year with vesting milestones linked to the restart of the Dalgaranga gold mine in the Murchison. *The pay table does not detail some elements of the executive packages, including superannuation, leave provisions or benefits such as car or housing allowances. Also, in some cases, total remuneration may be lower than the combined fixed pay and bonuses listed because of value reversals on previous equity grants.