Major windfall for senior Discovery managers as R336m in bonuses get approved

DISCOVERY’s senior managers are set for a major windfall after the group’s remuneration committee (Remco) approved R336.6 million bonus payments for the directors and management incentives.

The details of the bonus payments were laid out in the company’s annual report made public yesterday.

The annual bonus pool payment for the 2018 financial years rose by 33 percent from the prior year’s pool.

A total of seven directors will share R15.8m, while a pool of 1 134 managers will share a R265m bounty and 203 people will share a R85.1m profit pool.

Chairperson of the Remco, Sonja de Bruyn Sebotsa, said the surge in bonus payments was due to targets having been exceeded.

“This increase is due to the profit pool paying out at 98 percent of target in the financial year 2018, versus only 69 percent target in the financial year 2017 due to performance conditions,” De Bruyn Sebotsa said.

The annual report also revealed that the company’s chief executive, Adrian Gore, took home R19.8m in the year, including a performance bonus of R7.7m.

The group said Gore, who is also the founder of the group, was awarded for among other things the impending launch of Discovery Bank and profitable emerging businesses.

The Discovery Bank, which has passed major regulatory hurdles, is set to launch as South Africa’s next big full-service bank in the coming months.

Gore’s second-in-command, the group’s financial director, was paid R10m after he successfully established an unsecured R10 billion domestic medium-term note programme listed on the local bourse.

Discovery Life chief executive Hayton Kallner emerged as the highest paid executive in the group, taking home R29.2m, mainly due to a R17.6m long-term incentive payment he received.

The head of Discovery Invest, Kenny Rabson, was paid R13.7m, while the chief executive of Discovery Health Jonathan Broomberg was paid R12.1m.

A 2018 Deloitte Executive Compensation Report released this week proposed that the “Single Figure” metric, now required to be reported on by King IV, could have a broader role in establishing a standard against which companies can be measured against each other.

The Deloitte’s report further said the proposed metric would allow for internal and external comparisons on pay and inform the shareholder and societal debates around what is “fair and reasonable” in executive pay.

Bryden Morton, the executive director at remuneration consultancy firm 21st Century, said an element which has a large bearing on an organisations financial well-being was its salary and wage bill.