City saviour? You bet!
THE criticism has been damning. How can one person pay themselves £265m? Bet365 chief executive Denise Coates is the businesswoman facing the wrath of newspaper columnists for awarding herself a record-breaking pay deal. But let’s stop and ask ourselves a question. Why? Why are people lining up to fire barbs in the direction of one of the country’s most successful businesspeople?
The answer is simple. They have completely missed the point. They are portraying Denise as someone who takes. The truth is she is giving. She is giving again and again and again.
If bet365 makes a billion pounds profit, then around £450m of that will, one way or another, be it corporation tax, or, in Denise’s case, income tax on her salary, find its way into the hands of the Exchequer.
That’s aside from the income tax paid by the company’s 4,000, mostly local, employees.
We are talking huge sums of money flooding into HMRC. Not to mention the millions upon millions the Coates Foundation donates to charities – many of which will be in North Staffordshire.
So much has been made of Denise’s salary without any basic analysis of the situation. Drawing a big wage is actually far from the most efficient manner to take money out of a business. The most efficient way is to pay oneself a dividend.
By giving herself a salary, Denise is actually paying more tax – and she is taxed at the highest rate. Should people really be complaining about that? The country would actually lose out if she left that money in the business.
I have always been incredulous at the negative attitude to entrepreneurs carried by some people. Stoke-on-trent is a case in point.
We talk about ourselves as a second tier city, with poverty and social problems, and yet, in these six towns, we have a history of great and iconic entrepreneurs, the biggest of all being Josiah Wedgwood, a name which to this day carries immense reverence, respect, and commercial viability.
Wedgwood has something in common with the thousands of North Staffordshire entrepreneurs, big and small, who have followed in his footsteps – they have always taken the risk.
Those people, from the shopkeeper to the joiner, the builder to the engineer, risk their own wellbeing and resources.
Our society is made up of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who are not reliant on the state, but give to the state. They are far removed from the fat cats who sit idly on company boards picking up inflated pay packets.
They are living on the edge off their own skillset. Yes, their drive is to create wealth – but they are creating that wealth for everybody.
Bet365 is a great example. Like so many other businesses, the Coates family could have based themselves abroad and paid much less tax. But they didn’t, because they care about this area, this society, that they too were brought up in. They have built a fantastic new office building at Etruria, creating hundreds of construction jobs, and then filled it with huge numbers of employees.
Every day, the money created in those offices is cascading through the community. It is supporting shops, feeding the housing market, restaurants, pubs, car dealers. That money is recirculated again and again.
People want to live, work, and play. The high-end employees that are coming to bet365 want recreation and leisure facilities. A healthy business presence feeds development. It is the lifeblood which drives a city forward into new and exciting eras.
Denise Coates is making our city stronger. She is encouraging young, talented people to stay here, and other businesses to take root – ‘bet365 is thriving in Stoke-on-trent, so can we’. If we are talking about adverts for Stokeon-trent, what better than bet365 sat in our midst?
Why are we so obsessed with a single person making money? Denise is running a private enterprise which helps to run the state’s most basic provisions – schools, the NHS.
Bet365 has more economic clout than many countries. Financially, it makes Stoke-on-trent City Council look like a League Two football club.
Remember, this is a family business, built up from within. The Coates family have laid every brick themselves. You cannot criticise those who have created so much for so many others for taking the reward from their business.
Let’s add some context to Denise’s achievements. In the 80s, I drove down Keele bank towards Stoke-on-trent and I couldn’t see a thing.
There was no panorama, just smog. When the smog did clear, there was dereliction The city was a complete mess.
But there was reinvention. Look across the city now and the panorama is wholly different. Greenery, canal walks, clean air – and amidst that some of the finest businesses in the country.
We have fantastic success stories right under our noses which should be celebrated, not lambasted. I, for one, applaud bet365.
Those who make global transformational gains are those who come up with a unique proposition.
At the very top of the ladder are the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
Bet365 are at the next rung down on the ladder, and yet they will be doing more for the UK than any of those big four because not only are they paying their due taxes, but they are paying them in their home country.
It’s a talent to get out of the blocks quicker than anyone else. In sport, it’s commended. In business, it’s viewed with cynicism. We shouldn’t criticise success, we should celebrate it.
Forget pay packets. Denise Coates is one of the great saviours of this city. Her worth, her value, is priceless.