Coca-Cola chief brings £500,000 ‘cost of living’ handout

The boss of Coca-Cola HBC has pocketed more than £500,000 in ‘cost of living’ over the past two years.

Zoran Bogdanovic, CEO of the soft drink bottling giant, received the payments as part of a package of salary, bonuses and perks, which amounted to a whopping £8 million over two years.

The astonishing figures from the Mail on Sunday, the sister title of This is Money, highlight the lavish handouts received by the highly paid bosses of some of the UK’s biggest companies.

These perks include generous allowances for their partners, travel expenses, and designer clothes. Other benefits include subsidized housing, club memberships, and home security fees.

Bogdanovic received £4.1 million last year, including nearly £400,000 in benefits. He was paid a ‘cost of living and exchange rate adjustment’ of £285,000 and housing allowance of £91,000. He also received a ‘travel allowance’ of £2,240 and a ‘partner allowance’ of £860.

Shareholders recently protested Bogdanovic’s remuneration package. In one of the biggest protests against executive excesses this year, nearly a third of them voted against the company’s salary report.

However, such votes are not binding and boards can simply turn their noses up to investors.

Although the company’s shares are listed in London, Bogdanovic, a Croat, is based at Coca-Cola HBC’s headquarters in Zug, the luxury hedge fund capital of Switzerland where the cost of living is significantly higher than in his home country.

HBC — whose partner The Coca-Cola Company features singer Rita Ora in a recent ad campaign — declined to comment.

Bogdanovic’s compensation package is worrying UK retail investors and pension savers as Coca-Cola HBC shares, as a member of the elite FTSE 100 index, are automatically included in popular index-tracker funds.

The stock has lagged the index since Coca-Cola HBC entered the main London stock market in 2013.

As ordinary workers were forced to pay more for their daily commutes, some FTSE 100 bosses received tens of thousands of pounds to be driven to their offices. Fresnillo boss Octavio Alvidrez received £38,000 for his driver last year.

Other executives enjoying the perks of the top job include new Burberry boss Jonathan Akeroyd, who took in £4.3 million last year, including the maximum £50,000 allowed for a car and designer clothes.

Lavish: Pop star Rita Ora stars in the latest Coca-Cola ad campaign

Jack Bowles, head of British American Tobacco, received a salary of £1.3 million, which included £33,000 in costs for the ‘annual maintenance and oversight’ of his personal and home security system. He also received £39,000 for a driver.

National Grid’s John Pettigrew has the use of a car and driver – a perk that cost the energy giant £43,500 – and he also received a £12,000 allowance for a company car.

Pettigrew’s £7.3m package puts him among the highest paid FTSE 100 bosses. He previously claimed half a million pounds to move from Leamington Spa to London in 2019.

Luis Gallego, head of British Airways owner IAG, was paid £250,000 a year ‘transitional allowance’ for holding homes in Madrid and London.

Tesco boss Ken Murphy was paid £102,000 to commute from his childhood home in Ireland to the company’s headquarters in Hertfordshire.