Shareholders are probably wondering why it's so little compared to the crashing stock price. News Corp stock (NWS) is down around 45% from it's one year high. How do performance bonuses only drop 20% when the performance of the company that you run is doing so poorly? Who would want to invest in that?
While Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers laid off journalists and fought their way through a global advertising recession, the Australian-born media mogul endured a modest degree of personal belt-tightening – his take-home pay dropped by 6% to $16.8m, or £10.9m.
Although still a hefty sum, Murdoch's annual pay packet was his smallest since 2003. The 79-year-old billionaire's salary was unchanged at $8.1m, but his performance-related bonus fell 20% to $4.4m. He got stock and share options worth $4.05m and he enjoyed $275,117 worth of personal use of a corporate jet.
