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Top-earning Australian company bosses pocketed payments of more than $20m last year

<span>Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP</span>
Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

Three Australian company bosses each pocketed payments worth more than $20m last year despite a fall in average executive remuneration, which is likely to be further tested by the coronavirus pandemic.

An annual CEO pay survey conducted by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (Acsi), which represents retirement funds with $3tn under management, found the average pay of a chief executive of one of Australia’s top 100 listed companies fell by 7.4% in the 12 months to the end of June last year.

By Acsi’s calculations, Andrew Barkla, the CEO of student placement company IDP Education, was Australia’s highest paid company boss with a pay packet worth more than $37.7m – a record figure over the six years in which Acsi has surveyed executive pay.

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Don Meij of Domino’s Pizza set the previous record, $36.8m, in 2017.

Paul Perreault, who heads health care giant CSL, came in second with a package worth $30.5m.

The CEO of biopharma group Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals, Philippe Wolgen, came third at about $20.6m.

Related: Businesses hit by new Victorian Covid restrictions fear being thrown off jobkeeper scheme

Others to end last year with bulging wallets included the recently departed head of troubled wine group Treasury Wine Estates, Michael Clarke, who received a $19.8m package, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, on $12.2m, and Rio Tinto chief Jean-Sébastien Jacques, on $10.3m.

Acsi calculated the total realised value of pay packets by adding together cash and shares CEOs received during the year.

However, the organisation cautioned that the $16.5m package received by Webjet boss John Guscic “includes share options which are currently valued to be significantly lower” than when he received them.

Webjet, an online travel booking company, has been smashed by the coronavirus crisis due to the closure of many domestic and almost all international flights.

“It is encouraging to see that, after many years of engagement and scrutiny from investors, boards have applied a greater level of restraint assessing executive remuneration,” Acsi CEO Louise Davidson said.

“More boards are using sensible discretion to rein in outcomes for senior executives – demonstrated by the fact that 25 CEOs in the last year had their bonuses zeroed out where performance was not adequate, compared with only seven a year earlier.

“That growing maturity and sophistication will be put to the test this year as boards wrestle with the deep and persistent impacts of Covid-19 across the Australian community, and globally.

“Boards of ASX200 companies will need to seriously consider how remuneration outcomes will be perceived externally, given the widespread impact of the pandemic on investors, staff, customers, governments and other key stakeholders.”

Soaring share prices swelled pay packets at the top of the table, with Barkla’s record result caused by him cashing in options he was issued before the company floated on the stock exchange in 2015.

In addition to paying their executives more while they are in the top job, companies also paid them less to leave.

Termination payments dropped from $26m in 2018 (for 15 people) to $18.4m last year (for 14).

The numbers do not include CEOs appointed part way through the year.