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Cortese was Premier League's highest paid CEO, earning over £2m per annum


Saint-Armstrong

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That's just under £40k a week...not bad! But hey, he did do a hell of a lot of good work in getting us back up to where we are now - like a poster said above if NC had come in and guaranteed us an 8th place finish in the Prem when we were -10 in L1 I don't think anyone would have argued with a few years salary at £2m...

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It's alot of money but he did deliver so I don't have a problem with it.

 

What he achieved was good but it's not like he got us promoted on a shoestring, he had serious cash behind him and some quality players already at the club. Anyone who treated club legends like Le Tiss how he did never really had the club at heart, it's obvious what he did have at heart - £2mill a year.

 

A net spen of £3m under Adkins from league 1 to premier league isn't bad...

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Dear oh dear...someone earns a lot of money and suddenly he's the devil incarnate. Life dishes out different deals to different folk - it always has and always will. You can either get on with your own life and concern yourself with how to improve it, or drown yourself in self-pity fretting over someone else's good fortune. Cortese may have been a nasty little man - I couldn't give a fig...he did a good job while he was with the club and delivered. If Marcus and KL wanted to reward him or indeed allow him to reward himself, then that's their business...not mine and not any of yours.

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The amount he earned was nothing in comparison to the success he brought here.

 

"Just an employee" :lol: What a classic that one was!

 

Alpine that is a very naiive post. You liked him because he splashed the cash (not his) which whisked us up the leagues. Yea we all enjoyed the ride as fans but I for one knew it would end in tears and in tears it ended. He alienated great swathes of the business community, a large percentage of the ex-players and was a nasty little bully who took out legal injunctions to get his way (and lost them all or settled the night before incurring massive costs). Good Riddance to him. He was an odious little creep.

 

Word of advice, probably best to keep your intense personal bitterness and spite out of the public eye. Especially when the person you're so damn resentful of did such a grand job here. Otherwise, people might see you for the vindictive character you really are - and that wouldn't be so good would it? :)

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I suspect the £2m included a whopping bonus to get us back into the EPL. I wouldn't be surprised if the figure was agreed when Marcus was alive. There will be a lot of league one owners out there who would gladly give their CEO a seven figure bonus if they got them to the EPL.

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The amount he earned was nothing in comparison to the success he brought here.

 

"Just an employee" :lol: What a classic that one was!

 

 

 

Word of advice, probably best to keep your intense personal bitterness and spite out of the public eye. Especially when the person you're so damn resentful of did such a grand job here. Otherwise, people might see you for the vindictive character you really are - and that wouldn't be so good would it? :)

 

Not vindictive (I assume you know me?), just speak as I find. I had dealings with him and imo the man was an unpleasant bully who used the fact he had access to a lot of money (not his) to intimidate all those who dared to stand up to him. Maybe you need to have a pint with Francis Benali or MLT, they will not tell you much different.

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I have no problem with a CEO/Chairman earning a sum of money that is in line with the amount of success they preside over.

 

Yes, he was "only spending other people's money" but that's what most CEOs in the land do. They spend other peoples money. Some do it wisely and achieve success, others don't.

 

Yes, Cortese had his faults, some quite large if the hole in the commercial revenue is anything to go by, but he still warrants some plaudits for what he achieved.

Edited by trousers
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Losing Cortese was the biggest down point of the season. I hope the new board can keep up his excellent work, but fear he set the bar very high. I'd happily have Cortese back on double the reported wage.

Edited by Joensuu
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I suspect the £2m included a whopping bonus to get us back into the EPL. I wouldn't be surprised if the figure was agreed when Marcus was alive. There will be a lot of league one owners out there who would gladly give their CEO a seven figure bonus if they got them to the EPL.

 

Indeed. Yes, the headline figure is "huge" but, as you say, if I was the owner of a League 1 football club I'd be giving my CEO a similar incentive to get us into the dwarfing riches of the PL.

 

If anyone, the person to have a pop at for the size of Cortese's remuneration package is Markus.

Edited by trousers
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A net spen of £3m under Adkins from league 1 to premier league isn't bad...

 

I agree, also lucky we had the £12-15mill from Chambo and one of England's best midfielders already on the books.

 

Cortese did a good job (finding the right manager is not an easy job) but the only reason we had the players and managers we did was because of Leibherr's cash.

 

Trying to find the right manager is a whole different ball game if the club can't pay good wages and have little in the transfer kitty.

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I agree, also lucky we had the £12-15mill from Chambo and one of England's best midfielders already on the books.

 

Cortese did a good job (finding the right manager is not an easy job) but the only reason we had the players and managers we did was because of Leibherr's cash.

 

Trying to find the right manager is a whole different ball game if the club can't pay good wages and have little in the transfer kitty.

 

Some people are better at spending other people's money than other people are.

 

I understand why people go for the "the money made it easy for him" line but you still have to be good at what you do in order to use that money wisely.

 

There must be plenty of examples in the business world of CEOs not succeeding with oodles of other peoples money at their disposal?

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The amount he earned was nothing in comparison to the success he brought here.

 

"Just an employee" :lol: What a classic that one was!

 

 

 

Word of advice, probably best to keep your intense personal bitterness and spite out of the public eye. Especially when the person you're so damn resentful of did such a grand job here. Otherwise, people might see you for the vindictive character you really are - and that wouldn't be so good would it? :)

 

What was he then if not just an employee? Perhaps let's put it in his terms instead, a department head. £2m makes him the highest paid chairman in the country presiding over a premier league club with commercials revenues no better than Watfords.

 

People will argue that it was because of him we have four players in the England squad, yet I don't recall Adam Lallana or Rickie Lambert reminiscing about how Cortese spent hours on the training ground coaching them on how to find space, take free kicks and penalties and teach them our high pressing tactic which has won so many plaudits. The coaching staff are the reason why we've had four players in the England squad.

 

People will argue the he took us from league one to the premier league, so perhaps on that basis we should make Lallana, Lambert, Schniderlin and Fonte the highest paid players in the country in their positions as without their creativity, goals, interceptions and defending we might well have not made it to the premier league. Will Les Reed be the highest paid director of football in the country as he too was instrumental in our rise up the leagues? I very much doubt it. Why did we sack Adkins, surely he should have been the highest paid manager in the country, Afterall, he took us from l1 to the premier league. Instead of being given a £10m a year contract he got the sack and airbrushed from history.

 

The fact of the matter what Cortese was just an employee, one that on paper did a good job but a CEO is also responsible for generating income as well as spending money. despite paying himself champions league wages his performance in this area was very much midtable championship.

Edited by Turkish
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I don't care what he earned, as a fan he got us to where we are now. We had Lowe, Crouch, Wilde and the goons before them etc and. I don't care what they were paid it was too much. ML was happy to agree to employ him and trusted him. That is good enough for me.

 

Crouch wasn't paid anything and paid 500k to save the club.

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Which possibly tells you all you need to know about how well the club was run leading up to that point time...

 

 

Indeed but he still coughed up half a million pounds of his own money to keep us afloat until Liebherr came in and bought us for a very reasonable £14m. I contend that even though we were in administration and were -10, we were in a good position to start the climb whoever it was who took us over. I think Marcus was a natural brake to Cortese's excesses but once he passed away the power went to Cortese's head. He very quickly, in my opinion, assumed the role of a dictator who must not be crossed. If he really was the messiah, as people are saying on here, why did Katarina come back to take over and remove him? From what I am seeing the club is now being run sensibly and building bridges with the community that were badly damaged by a man who couldn't give a flying f*** who he trampled on.

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Not vindictive (I assume you know me?), just speak as I find. I had dealings with him and imo the man was an unpleasant bully who used the fact he had access to a lot of money (not his) to intimidate all those who dared to stand up to him. Maybe you need to have a pint with Francis Benali or MLT, they will not tell you much different.
Duncan, it doesnt matter what ex-players thought of NC, thank god we didnt have one of them running the club. Where would we be now with them?

As a fan I try to pull away from worshipping any ex player and accept they have faults away from football and their judgement may not be perfection. i respect and adore what MLT did for us when he was a player and love seeing him on Skysports.I paid nearly £1000 for one of his shirts at a charity auction, so I hardly have anything against him.

As for your dealings with NC i respect that you had a falling out with him, but reading your posts it shows that you may not be the best to deal with if things are not going your way. The internet of course can give a skewed view and so that may not be the case in real life.

NC did a fantastic job and I for one would have preferred he stayed as i liked his determination and single mindedness to get the club to the top. ML was no fool and if he was good enough for him then he should be good enough for us. Him not being chummy with ex-players and not stocking publications did not effect my enjoyment of our rise back to the heights, and the quick way that the new regime rushed into getting these things changed as NC left concerns me that they are more worried about popularity than success

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I was thinking about this last night sadly. He did do a good job and to those of you saying "but he did it with other people's money", well that's no different to the CEO of a VC backed business who has an invested pot of money to spend to meet an incremental growth target.

 

However, what it does show how overpaid everyone involved with the Premier League is. SFC is actually a small-medium company in terms of revenue and staff size and I doubt you'd find many CEOs earning that much of companies with considerably more revenue. This is the extreme scale, but take Virgin Media's last CEO; http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/apr/30/neil-berkett-virgin-media (take in to account revenue of almost £4bn, the reach, staff of circa 16,000, the network they own, the responsibility that comes with that network and broadcasting to home of the public etc etc etc.)

 

I don't think there's much point moaning, it's just another example of football being driven by money and being overpriced/overpaid in many aspects.

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I think the upshot of all of this is that Cortese was good for Saints and Saints was good for Cortese.

 

Whatever he was paid would have been set by the remuneration committee, based on targets originally set by Markus, so whatever the figure is, it's not that relevant.

 

However, it does beg the question of why he just walked away from it. It is likely that this was his best ever pay day.

 

I don't expect any mud to be thrown from the estate, that doesn't seem to be their way and the comment about "The finances were in a difficult situation" was about as far as they are likely to go.

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Not vindictive (I assume you know me?), just speak as I find. I had dealings with him and imo the man was an unpleasant bully who used the fact he had access to a lot of money (not his) to intimidate all those who dared to stand up to him. Maybe you need to have a pint with Francis Benali or MLT, they will not tell you much different.

 

Like the vast majority of supporters I was happy with the set up and the 'vision' on the assumption that Cortese was the owners 'man' and had their full backing and whilst the team was successful (which it really should have been with the financial backing in place)

 

However there were a number of issues that I was personally unhappy about (but for my sins was willing to overlook whilst the team was on an upward trend)

 

The number of stories, from a variety of good and respected sources about Cortese's attitude to people and local businesses did him, and more importantly, the club's standing in the local and wider community, no good at all.

 

I do hope the new administration will continue to progress the club and they seem intent in forging closer links with supporters and the wider community so lets hope we move on and consign Cortese to an item in Duncan and Co's next book (btw this is a must read for all supporters and a great effort!!)

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Some people are better at spending other people's money than other people are.

 

I understand why people go for the "the money made it easy for him" line but you still have to be good at what you do in order to use that money wisely.

 

There must be plenty of examples in the business world of CEOs not succeeding with oodles of other peoples money at their disposal?

 

Yes of course, but there also must be plenty examples of CEOs getting teams promoted on less resources and not earning £2mill a year.

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I would think that the issue with NC's remuneration for the owners (who sanction it) is the return on or growth of capital. The business was acquired for £15m ish had a further £30m invested and now has a net worth of ? or a sale value of ? £100m?. The numbers may be wrong but the principle holds. This is more hedge fund or investment banking returns and if anything his payments were probably below the market average.

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Money is no certainty of success, Cortese delivered quicker then anyone could have possibly expected even considering the resources at his disposal.

 

He rubbed up a lot of people the wrong way but was undeniably succesful. Was he worth that wage? I don't begrudge him it, let's put it that way.

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Not really. A banking chief on £2.2m will likely have 200,000 employees ans the company making £5bn profit from £1trillion of assets. A company with 200 employees and making a spanking loss, not so much.

Do me a favour. Goldman Sachs don't even hold £1t assets. How much do you think Blankfein is on? It's a heck of a lot more than 2.2m.

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Do me a favour. Goldman Sachs don't even hold £1t assets. How much do you think Blankfein is on? It's a heck of a lot more than 2.2m.

 

Goldman Sachs are an investment bank, not retail bank. People like RBS have bigger balance sheets and pay their CEO a lot less.

Edited by buctootim
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