Lovisa boss Victor Herrero pockets almost $30m pay packet

Victor Herrero, boss of jewellery chain Lovisa, has snuck under the radar to bag one of the biggest remuneration packages among ASX-listed companies.

Victor Herrero, boss of jewellery chain Lovisa, has snuck under the radar with one of the biggest remuneration packages on the ASX, taking home more than $29m, easily trumping the pay packets of the chief executives of Woolworths and Coles and eclipsing the scandalous multimillion-dollar golden parachute for former Qantas boss Alan Joyce.

The payout to the Lovisa chief executive was equivalent to ­almost half of Lovisa’s full-year profit for 2023.

In a remuneration report issued late on Thursday, Lovisa, whose largest shareholder is billionaire retailer entrepreneur Brett Blundy, it was revealed that Mr Herrero was paid a total of $29.09m in cash, shares and options, up from a slightly more modest $20.9m in 2022.

Mr Herrero was paid $1.9m in salary for 2023, the Lovisa annual report states, but that was topped up with $2.05m in performance-based payments and a monster $24.975m in options and rights.

A former executive at Inditex, owner of global fast-fashion chain Zara, Mr Herrero was appointed as a director of Lovisa in October 2021 and commenced as chief executive in November 2021.

Mr Herrero was paid a $1m sign-on bonus in fiscal 2022, under the terms of which he was required to purchase an equivalent number of Lovisa shares.

At almost an annual remuneration of $30m for Lovisa, which has a market capitalisation of $2.22bn, it will be hard for anyone to beat Mr Herrero in terms of the ASX’s highest paid CEOs.

Rob Scott, who heads Wesfarmers, which is almost 30 times larger than Lovisa, took home only $8.175m in 2023.

Mr Herrero has earned more money than the combined remuneration of Wesfarmers’ four highest paid executives – its CEO, CFO, the boss of Bunnings and boss of Kmart Group – who together were only paid $23.7m.

Lovisa sells cheap jewellery across 801 stores in 39 countries and has more than 8000 team members. It has annual revenue of just under $600m. Again, comparing to Wesfarmers, the Perth-based conglomerate has annual revenues of $43.55bn and staff of more than 110,000.

As Mr Herrero earned his $29m for 2023, Lovisa shares fell 13.67 per cent. The stock closed 1.7 per cent lower at $20.58 on Thursday. Last year, sales rose 33.1 per cent to $596.5m as net profit lifted 20.1 per cent to $68.2 per cent.

“The company has been able to continue to deliver strong ­profit growth while investing in the structures to support our ­global expansion in the face of more difficult trading conditions in the second half, which leaves us well placed as we move forward with store rollout in both existing and new markets,” Mr Herrero said last month.