Billionaire Bet365 boss takes home £150m despite 45% pay cut
Britain’s highest-paid woman, the Bet365 billionaire Denise Coates, has given herself a 45% pay cut but still claimed £150m in salary and dividends last year as profits at the online gambling company soared.The Stoke-based business reported an increase in turnover from £3.4bn to £3.7bn last year, while also cutting costs and benefiting from a one-off gain on the value of its investments, as equity markets improved.These three factors catapulted the company to a £626m profit before tax in the year to the end of March 2024, compared with a £60m pre-tax loss the year before.
Coates is known in part for her record-breaking pay packets, which have exceeded £2bn during her time at the helm of Bet365, an online gambling empire that she transformed from a chain of betting shops owned by her father, Peter.The family came 20th in last year’s Sunday Times Rich List, with a combined net worth of nearly £7.5bn.The 57-year-old Denise, who has described herself as the “ultimate gambler”, paid herself £95m this year and is also entitled to at least half of the £110m dividend that the company paid, based on her shareholding of more than 50%.The total £150m payout is significantly down on the previous year, when she awarded herself £270m, and far below the record-breaking £466m she collected in 2020.
In 2021, Coates collected £300m.The company cited reduced executive pay as a factor in its rebound from last year’s losses.Including the company’s three other directors – two of whom are Denise Coates’s father Peter and her brother John – executive pay was down from £304m to £124m.The £180m pay cut accounted for approximately a quarter of the difference between Bet365’s £60m deficit in 2023 and the £626m profit it reported for the year to March 2024.The group also donated £120m to the Denise Coates Foundation, a charity she set up that is controlled by members of the Coates family and their employees.
The sum is a fifth up on the £100m given to the foundation last year.In October, analysis by the Guardian found that the donations may have saved Coates’s online gambling empire more in tax than the foundation has yet given to good causes.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionThe foundation has previously said it needs to build up large reserves so that it can be self-sustaining in the long term, rather than relying on continued contributions from the company.Accounts for the wider Bet365 group also included those of Stoke City Football Club, for the final time.The club was owned by the Bet365 group until last year, when it was demerged from Bet365, with control passed to John Coates.
The club lost £30m during the year, dragging the overall group profit down from £626m to £596m.Bet365 said it had not set aside any money relating to an investigation into potential breaches of anti money-laundering laws by Austrac, an Australian intelligence agency, because the investigation is ongoing.
Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content
Meta will get rid of factcheckers, “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” and recommend more political content on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced.In a video message, Zuckerberg vowed to prioritise free speech after the return of Donald Trump to the White House and said that, starting in the US, he would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”.X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, relies on other users to add caveats and context to contentious posts.Zuckerberg said Meta’s “factcheckers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created”.The tech firm’s content moderation teams will be moved from California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams”, he said
Nick Clegg’s departure signals a new political era at Meta
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Happy New Year! May dry January leave us all with fewer headaches. Today in TechScape: Meta promotes a Trumpian bulldog, TikTok faces mounting problems that aren’t a ban, Meta faces backlash against its approach to AI and Elon Musk meddles abroad.Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, is now the former head of global affairs at Meta. He announced his resignation on Thursday after six years at the tech giant
Apple says it will update AI feature after inaccurate news alerts
Apple has said it will update an artificial intelligence feature that has issued inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones, including that a man accused of killing a US insurance boss had shot himself and that the tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.The tech company said it was developing a software update that would “further clarify” when news notifications were actually summaries generated by the company’s Apple Intelligence system. It said the update would be rolled out in the coming weeks.It follows a formal complaint by the BBC in December, when news alerts branded with the corporation’s logo told some iPhone users that Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, Brian Thompson, had shot himself. Mangione is alive and being held at a prison in Brooklyn
British AI startup with government ties is developing tech for military drones
A company that has worked closely with the UK government on artificial intelligence safety, the NHS and education is also developing AI for military drones.The consultancy Faculty AI has “experience developing and deploying AI models on to UAVs”, or unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a defence industry partner company.Faculty has emerged as one of the most active companies selling AI services in the UK. Unlike the likes of OpenAI, Deepmind or Anthropic, it does not develop models itself, instead focusing on reselling models, notably from OpenAI, and consulting on their use in government and industry.Faculty gained particular prominence in the UK after working on data analysis for the Vote Leave campaign under Dominic Cummings, who went on to serve as Boris Johnson’s adviser
Rural internet deserts in England and Wales to finally get fast broadband
The last corners of England and Wales yet to be covered by a £5bn push to widen fast broadband could finally get access to rapid downloads, streaming and video calls after the government announced £289m in new taxpayer-funded contracts enabling coverage.After some people in broadband blackspots were forced to turn to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite-enabled internet connections, the latest deals to boost connectivity should give 131,000 households and businesses in village and rural internet deserts gigabit-level fibre coverage – allowing a high-definition movie to be downloaded in around a minute.The announcement comes after years of frustration over a mostly rural-urban digital divide. Campaigners have said slow internet in the countryside inhibits business, restricts access to online health and education services, and can worsen social isolation.The new contracts to lay full-fibre connections in areas not reached by private investment would apply in north Wales, including Anglesey, south-west Wales, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon, Somerset, Essex and the north-east of England, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) announced
LA tech entrepreneur nearly misses flight after getting trapped in robotaxi
A tech entrepreneur based in Los Angeles became trapped in a malfunctioning self-driving car for several minutes last month, causing him to nearly miss a flight, he said.Mike Johns was riding in an autonomous Waymo car on his way to Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix when the vehicle began driving around a parking lot repeatedly, circling eight times as he was on the phone seeking help from the company.“I got my seat belt on. I can’t get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on?” he can be heard telling a Waymo representative in a video he posted to LinkedIn three weeks ago
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