It has been revealed that Nicola Cortese was paid a massive £1.96 million in the last financial year ending in June 2013.
It was no secret that Nicola Cortese was on a good salary at Saints indeed in the season that Saints earned promotion it was revealed that he had pocketed around £1.4 million for that year, although that was far in excess than most Premier League CEO's it was believed that it also included bonus's for getting Saints to the top flight.
the latest accounts reveal that last season his earnings increased even further and that he received a total of £1, 965.511 for his troubles plus a contribution into a pension scheme of £163, 092 bringing his total renumeration to over £2 million pounds for the year excluding other benefits.
In comparison to other Chairmen/ CEO's for the previous year ending 2012 David Gill the CEO of Manchester United then, earned £2.6 million, on average though the going rate for a CEO in the Premier appears to be around the £1.1 million paid to West Brom's CEO with that of Stoke City earning a shade over £500,000.
Daniel Levey at Spurs earned 2.2 million and his counterpart at Arsenal £2 million, given the differences in turnover for the likes of Manchester United, Spurs and Arsenal, it could be said that Cortese was paying himself the salary of the Captain of a Luxury Ocean Liner whilst only being the skipper of a cross channel ferry.
But perhaps the reason why Katharina Liebherr didnt think she was getting value for money from her CEO is when you look at the financial figures in the accounts, any company doesn't mind paying big bucks for its CEO but that individual has to be earning that salary, yes under Cortese we returned to the premier League so we received a big chunk of cash, but aside from that we were not bringing in the revenue that other Premier league clubs were, as revealed our Commercial Income was worth around £6.5 million in 12/13, just about the lowest in the division and around half of the next lowest earner, Mr Cortese was earning the same as the Arsenal CEO but for the Gunners he was bringing in around £50 million in commercial income excluding matchday and Premier league earnings.
Spurs likewise brought in £35 million from Sponsorship and Corporate hospitality, £9 million in merchandising and £9 million from other commercial activities, the message was clear we were paying our ex CEO top dollar, but he was not performing at top dollar level.
Of course we are not of the size of Spurs and Arsenal, so lets look at Stoke City as a similar size club although paying their CEO a quarter of Cortese's salary, in 2011/12 aside from the TV, gate receipts and premier income they brought in, £6 ,million in sponsorship and advertising, £3 million in conferencing and hospitality, £3.6 million in merchadising, over double our earnings last season, oh and you can add to that £5 million from the Europa league earnings which dispels the myth there is no money to be made from that competition.
But it was not just the lack of income that would have rung alarm bells in Switzerland, the lack of advertising hoardings and empty Corporate boxes was a lot of potential income lost not only this season but last, but perhaps what really made Katharina Liebherr realise that the club wasnt being run properly was the amount of cash being wasted.
The training ground project was initially going to cost around £15 million, 3 years later and its still not finished and the cost has spiraled to over £30 million, add to that the amount of money wasted on signing players who have contributed little to the cause, Ramirez £12 million, Mayuka £3.5 million, Forren £3.5 million, again whilst every club would expect to have a player or two not come good, financially for 2012/13 we spent around £30 million around 2/3 of that was spent on those 3 aforementioned players who contributed little, for a club like Saints you can live with perhaps a quarter of the money wasted but not to the percentage we did in transfer dealings.
This is not including the other areas that might have concerned Katharina like the high turnover of staff, many of whom pursued the club and won through industrial tribunals and won, or the high profile legal action with Francis Benali, perhaps the drop in the ocean but never the less not what you want to be reading about as the owner of the club.
So the message out of the club is clear over the past few weeks, yes Nicola Cortese steered us to the Premier League by his selection of managers, but that was only a small part of his job and he was earning a salary not commiserate with his performance in all of his key areas, after 3 years in charge when we returned to the Premier League the infrastructure should really have been in place to utilise the commercial opportunities now opening up to us as a club, but they werent and those financial opportunities went untapped.
Perhaps supporters dont care about what happens off the field, all they care about is performance on it, but commercial income is key to that, if 2013/14 income is similar to 12/13 then we will perhaps have earned around £15 million less over that period than clubs of a similar size, that could have bought us two good players if invested wisely and those two players might well have enabled us to challenge for a higher place in the league.
There is a bright future for Saints, as Nicola Cortese did when he sacked Nigel Adkins because he felt he had taken us as far as he could, Katharina Liebherr probably thought something similar about Nicola Cortese, he did not have the experience neccessary to run a lub in the Premier league it was now time to put that experience in place.
The saddest thing though as I have been saying for the past few years, it didnt have to be like that for Nicola Cortese, if he had embraced rather than alienated the business community of Southampton and allowed a succession of marketing directors to do their job, then perhaps that commerical income would have been in place and Cortese himself would still be here to bask in the glory, although there is that sneaking suspicion given the lack of a concrete and sustainable business plan that he saw his future here long term.