Denise Coates is one of Britain’s most successful citizens and generally regarded as the country’s wealthiest woman. As CEO of Bet365 she earned a salary of £221 million ($281 million) and has a personal fortune that’s estimated to be somewhere around £7 billion ($8.9 billion USD). While that’s great news for Coates, and testament to her skills as a business person, it’s not sitting as well with critics of income inequality, especially those at the High Pay Centre.
Coates’s salary made headlines in the UK recently when it was revealed that she not only made a hefty salary last year, but had also been given a £7 million ($8.9 million USD) raise.
In a statement to CNN, Luke Hildyard, executive director of the High Pay Centre lashed out Coates as a symbol for out-of-control income inequality worldwide. “People deserve to be rewarded for innovation and success but there’s a question of what’s sensible and proportionate. Nobody becomes a multi-billionaire in isolation from wider society. In this case, the wealth depends on money coming out of gamblers’ pockets, the efforts of thousands of staff, plus wider factors like people having some disposable income, a secure and reliable internet network or all the infrastructure that goes into staging sports events,” he said.
Hilyard’s comments strike some common criticisms of the gaming industry, it also glosses over some key points of Coates’ success story. The 56-year-old is well known for taking a struggling family bookmaking business into the 21st Century by purchasing the bet365.com domain name and building out a new vertical that proved to be extremely successful.
It should also be noted that the Coates family is generally as one of Britain’s top tax payers. Last year their tax bill came out to £460 million ($585 million).