GVC’s CEO Kenneth Alexander Agrees to a £150k Pay Cut

Kenneth Alexander, chief executive of GVC Holdings, a world-known gambling and online gambling operator for both B2B and B2C markets…

…has agreed to cut his annual salary.

Alexander decided to cut his pay by £150,000 because of the pressure he has been getting from GVC shareholders.

More Details on This Decision

GVC representatives confirmed that Alexander voluntarily applied to reduce his annual salary from £950,000 to £800,000.

The company’s executives came to an agreement to make this decision effective from June 1 of this year.

This gambling giant from the Isle of Man said that Alexander’s offer to lower his pay “was made in light of recent shareholder and proxy adviser on GVC’s 2018 remuneration report and on our Remuneration committee chair.”

Under his leadership, this operator has managed to evolve from a minor player…

…to the UK’s largest iGaming operator.

In recent years, GVC signed acquisitions involving big gambling names such as Sportingbet, bwin.party and Ladbrokes Coral.

CEO and Chairman of GVC Sell Stakes

GVC went through a double-digit fall in its share price after both the company’s CEO and one of the Chairmen sold off the bulk of their stakes.

In March, GVC’s shares went down almost 14% to 588.5p…

…after trading as low as 557p before staging a rally.

It is interesting that this sell-off came just a few days after the company revealed an impressive financial report for 2018.

This strange sell-off started after news broke that Alexander and the company’s chairman, Lee Feldman, sold nearly 3 million of their shares in GVC.

The CEO sold 2.06m shares at a discounted price of £6.66 per share. That way…

…he earned £13.7 million and was left with ownership over 666,666 shares in GVC. Those remaining are roughly worth around five times his annual base salary.

Feldman, on the other hand, sold a 900k share at the same price. By selling his shares, he earned £6 million and was left with 287,408 shares in the company.

Not Selling Any More Shares

Back in April, Alexander said that there will be no more selling of the company’s shares as long as he is still CEO.

The gambling giant’s number-one man has been given 453,625 additional shares in a firm that owns brands such as Ladbrokes Coral and bwin.

This was undertaken on March 27th as part of the brand’s incentive and bonus scheme…

…out of those, 344,332 were reserved for the incentive plan, while 109,293 went directly to deferred bonuses.

Another batch of 197,044 incentive plan shares was given to Chief Financial Officer, Rob Wood.

“I remain totally committed to GVC for the long-term, and as such I will not sell any further shares in GVC while I am CEO. We have had an excellent start to the year and I look forward to updating on progress in our Q1 trading update on April 5, 2019 and at the Capital Markets Day on May 16, 2019,” Alexander commented back in April.

Source:

“GVC’s Alexander agrees to £150k pay cut”, igamingbusiness.com, May 30, 2019.