Michael O’Leary has always had “hot takes” on anything related to his budget airline Ryanair, the aviation industry, or, in this case, executive pay.
The Irish carrier’s chief is up for a huge €100 million ($108 million) bonus in the coming months.
The one-off nine-figure bonus has followed O’Leary over the years, as he only qualifies for the bumper payout if the airline’s share price hits €21 and stays there for 28 consecutive days. Although he has yet to achieve this feat, with Ryanair’s shares soaring, he might just become eligible for it.
The $108 million, if unlocked, will be in addition to O’Leary’s pay. In the past financial year, he was paid €925,000 ($991,572), which included a bonus component of €425,000. Starting this year, his base salary will be €1.2 million ($1.3 million).
His fixed pay is lower than his peer’s at EasyJet, another budget carrier, despite Ryanair being Europe’s largest airline by passenger volume.
However, critics have already started attacking O’Leary’s $108 million payday prompting the outspoken CEO to chime in. After all, if football players and their managers can get paid in the multimillion range, why not him?
He pointed to Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp, both managers of Premier League football teams.
“Footballers are getting half a million a week. Pep, who I think is a genius and deserves every penny, is getting £25 million a year, Klopp too—and nobody says boo,” O’Leary told the Telegraph in a report published last April. “Yet some guy running a serious business employing 20,000-plus people gets paid £5 million or £10 million, and it’s suddenly excessive.”
The vocal Ryanair chief argues his pay is fair by comparing himself to football players in the past. For instance, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in March, he said that if French football icon Kylian Mbappé could make “$130 million to go play football for f—ing Real Madrid, then I think my contract is very good value for Ryanair shareholders.”
He also knows that if he becomes eligible to receive the $108 million, people at “the City” will raise eyebrows. But O’Leary wants nothing to do with those “mewling” over his pay.
To his credit, Ryanair has had a strong recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s grown over the years to become one of the region’s go-to airlines, stealing market share from competitors along the way.
In November, when the airline announced its first-half earnings for the current fiscal year, it rewarded investors with its first regular dividend. It also expects record annual profits for the year ended Mar. 31, although the Dublin-based airline has had to lower its initial forecasts following a tiff with online travel agencies.
Still, executive pay is a contentious subject. On the one hand, shareholders have flagged some instances of CEO pay being too high. For instance, last year, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot’s pay rise of £1.8 million ($2.3 million) sparked a debate among the pharma company’s shareholders. On the other hand, there’s also a growing gulf in the pay of U.K. and U.S.-based CEOs, which experts think is a roadblock to attracting executive-level talent.
The pay is typically linked to the company’s performance—as with Ryanair.
O’Leary realistically expects to hit the profit target by the 2025 fiscal year as Ryanair hopes to receive 200 million passengers between April 2024 and March 2025.
If he manages that while ensuring Ryanair’s share price stays elevated, it’ll be a year of wins for O’Leary.
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on April 29, 2024.
