Shannon Airport chief’s pay rises to €281k

The CEO of the Shannon Group last year enjoyed a sharp jump in his overall remuneration package to €281,869, figures show.

The group’s 2014 annual report discloses that Neil Pakey received the sum in his first full year at the group that operates Shannon Airport. Mr Pakey’s total pay was made up of €174,530 in basic salary, along with pension contributions of €91,875 and taxable benefits of €15,464.

His basic salary remained the same from 2013. However, a note attached to the accounts states that “pension contributions represent an accrual of pension contributions which have not yet been paid, of which €30,789 relates to 2013 from date of appointment and €61,086 relates to 2014”.

Mr Pakey was appointed in June 2013 and his pension contributions for 2013 totalled just €4,914. His total pay for the near six-month period in 2013 was €122,881. The annual report discloses that Mr Pakey received no bonus payment in 2014.

Mr Pakey’s remuneration compares to the €389,041 received by DAA chief executive Kevin Toland in 2014, made up of a salary of €250,000 and pension contributions of €139,041. Group turnover at the DAA stood at €564m as passenger numbers increased by 6% to 23.9m.

In his first full year at Shannon, Mr Pakey presided over a 17% increase in passenger numbers to 1.639m passengers largely on the back of new Ryanair services. Between August 29 and December 31, the Shannon group recorded earnings of €1.73m on revenues of €21.1m. The airport’s earnings for 2014 stood at €4.6m. Mr Pakey is a former managing director of John Lennon Airport at Liverpool where he oversaw passenger numbers increasing from 867,000 to 5.47m.

The annual report reveals that when the Shannon Group plc acquired the share capital of the Shannon Airport Authority and Shannon Commercial Properties Ltd (formerly Shannon Development) last August, the book value placed on the firms’ tangible assets was €44.3m and €65.65m on investment properties. The two firms had cash of €19.43m at the time of the transfer.

The total value of the net assets was €112.72m. The report shows that the group updated the valuation of the group’s investment properties on December 31 and wrote down the €65.65m value of the properties by €8.14m.