Genting Berhad chairman and chief executive Lim Kok Thay is paid RM74.81 million (USD18.08 million) in salary and bonus last year, even after taking a pay cut of up to 30% since March, according to the group’s annual reports.

In terms of  total remuneration, Lim’s package of RM151.34 million in 2020 is slightly higher than RM151.09 million in 2019. The slight increase was due to “other short term employee benefits” totaling RM51.34 million that he received in 2020, compared with RM420,000 in 2019.

In 2020, many of us had assumed that the coming year would see the pandemic deescalate and our livelihoods back to normalcy. However, we had prolonged lockdowns and many businesses went back to remote working.

Genting posted a net loss of RM1.02 billion for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2020, against a net profit of RM2 billion in FY19, while revenue fell 46.5% to RM11.56 billion from RM21.62 billion.

The group attributed the lower performance to mainly the group’s leisure and hospitality division that was adversely affected by temporary closures due to lockdowns, and the subsequent resumption of business with reduced capacity.

Of the RM74.81 million salary and bonus Lim received last year, a total of RM30.14 million was from Genting’s 49.5% owned hilltop casino operator Genting Malaysia Bhd. This is 21.7% lower than the RM38.5 million paid by GenM in 2019.

In terms of total remuneration, he received RM49.57 million from GenM in 2020, a decline of 26.8% from RM67.72 million in 2019, according to annual reports.

Editing by Rachel Hu