Paul Dacre took home almost £2.7m in his last year as editor of the Daily Mail.
Dacre, who ended a 26-year stint in that role in the summer but remains with the company as chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, received total remuneration of £2.68m in 2018. He received a salary of £1.45m and £66,000 in taxable benefits.
The 70-year old was also awarded a £1.17m payout as part of the parent company Daily Mail & General Trust’s long-term investment plan (LTIP). His total remuneration was up on 2017’s £2.3m.
Viscount Rothermere, the chairman of DMGT, said in the company’s annual report the LTIP payout had been approved after Dacre hit two main targets – ensuring the financial stability of the Mail titles and investing in strong brands of digital consumer media, particularly Mail Online.
Rothermere, whose total remuneration rose by a third to £2.4m, also paid tribute to Dacre in his chairman’s statement in the company’s annual report for the year to the end of September.
“The success of DMG Media would not have been possible without the enormous contribution of Paul Dacre,” he said. “Paul is the greatest Fleet Street editor of his generation. I am confident that the popular high-quality journalism that has defined the Daily Mail for generations will remain a hallmark of the newspaper under Geordie Grieg, Paul’s successor.”
Dacre, who joined the group in 1979 as the US bureau chief, has accrued a pension pot that pays out £735,000 a year. DMGT no longer makes any contributions towards his pension.
Last month DMGT reported that Mail Online’s ad revenues overtook those of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday for the first time.
The website reached the milestone despite a 13% slump in its global audience after Facebook’s move this year to deprioritise news appearing on users’ timelines. Its daily global unique browsers fell from about 14.83m to 12.9m, a loss of 1.93m, in the year to the end of September.
