Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder pockets $12m

Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder is heading for the exit on a high note, pocketing $12.1 million in his final year.

Departing Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder. Picture: Colin Murty

Wesfarmers boss Richard Goyder is heading for the exit on a high note, pocketing a thumping $12.1 million in his last year at the conglomerate.

The bumper pay packet is more than double the $5.5m Mr Goyder received last year.

While Mr Goyder’s cash salary for 2017 remained steady at $3.35m, he nabbed a $4m annual bonus and $4.3m in short-term and long-term incentives, the company’s annual report revealed yesterday.

The Wesfarmers CEO, who will step down in November after 12 years in the role, received 97 per cent of the total bonuses available to him for meeting or exceeding his targets.

In 2016, Mr Goyder bore the brunt of the pain from writedowns of department store Target and its Curragh coalmine, as he gave up 75 per cent of his short-term incentive awards following the Perth-based conglomerate’s dismal $407m profit. His take-home pay of $5.5m was nearly half the $9.9m he received the prior year.

But a strong performance in fiscal 2017, thanks to hardware giant Bunnings, Officeworks and discount department store Kmart, saw Wesfarmers post a 27 per cent rise in profit to $2.87 billion for the year.

The profit jump came despite supermarket giant Coles recording its worst performance since Wesfarmers bought it a decade ago. For the full year, Coles’ earnings fell 13.5 per cent to $1.609bn, its lowest result since 2013. The slide in earnings reflects the highly competitive supermarket sector and highlights rival Woolworths’ resurgence.

Coles’ souring performance after years of rising earnings is a blemish for Mr Goyder as he heads for the exit, but the blow was softened somewhat by the continued strength of Bunnings and Kmart.

Commenting on Mr Goyder’s time at the helm, chairman Michael Chaney said he had been an “outstanding” chief executive.

“The fact that the company has outperformed the general market over the past decade, in the face of the global financial crisis occurring soon after the major acquisition of the Coles group, is due in no small part to Richard’s personal values, his calm in the face of challenge, his focus on performance and his ability to inspire his people,” Mr Chaney said in the annual report.

Rob Scott, who will take over as CEO in November, also enjoyed a bump in his pay packet this year, taking home $5.6m compared with last year’s $1.9m. But his $2.5m fixed remuneration is markedly lower than Mr Goyder’s $3.35m.

Wesfarmers had previously flagged that Mr Scott’s salary as CEO would be lower than Mr Goyder’s.

Coles boss John Durkan missed out on his annual bonus thanks to the supermarket heavyweight’s poor performance, but he still got more than last year.