Peter Costello will walk away with $420,000 worth of Nine Entertainment shares but no entitlements after nearly 11 years on its board – eight of those as chair – after his premature resignation on Sunday evening.
The exit marks a costly two weeks for Costello, who will forfeit $374,000 in annual remuneration as chair of Nine’s board, 10 days after his decade-long tenure ended as chair of the Future Fund, where he took home $254,768 a year.
The former treasurer has departed two high-profile jobs in 10 days.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Costello’s total pay packet was worth $628,768, placing him in the upper echelons for director pay in Australia. Under Nine’s remuneration arrangements, non-executive directors do not receive entitlement benefits.
The salary for Nine’s chair position, which will be taken up by deputy chair Catherine West, ranks above the median chair salary in Australia, according to data compiled in March by The Australian Financial Review. However, it remains some distance behind the chair’s pay at the likes of Qantas ($750,000) and Telstra ($790,000), which both have appointed new chairs in the past 12 months.
West has been a director at Nine for eight years and deputy chair since September last year. Her remuneration is set to rise by almost $200,000 a year from a total package of $196,000 as a non-executive director. She is also chair of Nine’s people and remuneration committee.
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Costello informed Nine’s board of his resignation from his Balnarring holiday house on the Mornington Peninsula on Sunday after a board meeting. The board had also met on Friday to discuss the fallout from sexual harassment allegations within the organisation.
On Monday morning, Costello was seen leaving the house alongside his son, Sebastian Costello, a television and radio journalist at Nine.