Carnival Corp chief executive Arnold Donald’s total annual pay grew to $15.1m last year, despite the cruise major losing billions of dollars as a result of Covid-19.
That is up $1.8m from compensation of $13.3m in the prior year and $11.2m in 2019, according to the cruise major’s annual report for 2021.
Last year’s pay included a yearly salary of $1.5m, $7.45m in stock awards, $6m in incentive pay and $114,053 in all other pay.
Donald received the pay hike even as New York-listed Carnival suffered financial losses of $9.5bn for 2021 and $10.2bn for 2020, during a time that included a complete cruise sector shutdown that lasted 18 months.
Total yearly pay for chief financial officer David Bernstein also went up over the past three years.
He received $4.96m in compensation for last year, $4.43m for 2020 and $3.77m for 2019.
Meanwhile, the company’s shares, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange, dropped from $50.83 per share on 1 December 2019 to $13.17 per share on 1 March 2020 before reaching $29.56 per share on 1 May 2021.
They have slipped 2% to $23.23 per share as of mid-afternoon trading on Friday.
Miami-based Carnival also faced $34.6bn in debt at the end of 2021 as the Delta and Omicron variants of Covid-19 slowed its return to pre-Covid sailing.
But the company is still determined to return its entire fleet to full operation this year.
It has told TradeWinds it has 57 vessels out of 91 ships in service and plans to have all them sailing by the end of June.
