London 2012 chief Deighton to give £300,000 bonuses to charity

LONDON 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton received almost £300,000 in bonuses in the last financial year - and will give it all to charity.

CHARITABLE: London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton has given his bonuses of almost £300,000 to charity (Getty Images)

The London organising committee today confirmed in their 2009/10 financial reports and accounts that Deighton, who is  paid a salary of £480,000, was awarded £298,091 in respect of performance over the past two years.

Deighton, 54, is a Cambridge economics graduate and formerly a partner at Goldman Sachs before he was appointed Locog chief executive in 2005.

Locog is not a publicly-funded body and therefore was not required to release salary information in July, when the Government released the salary figures of the Olympic Delivery Authority which revealed chief executive David Higgins banks £394,999 a year.

But in releasing today's report, Locog also announced chairman Lord Sebastian Coe receives £365,500, which includes a sum to cover expenses while travelling abroad.

London 2012 organisers also confirmed that in the financial year ending in March 2010, £612m - representing nearly 90 per cent of the total domestic sponsorship budget target - had been raised.

In total £1.4 billion of the circa £2 billion operating budget had been secured at the end of the financial year.

Ticket sales and merchandising are set to be Locog's other main major revenue streams as they close in on the £2bn target - so far financed by domestic and international sponsorship, licensing, a portion of the worldwide Games television broadcast rights and IOC contributions.

Tickets for the Olympics will go on sale in March 2011 and for the Paralympics later in the year.

"As well as the once-in a lifetime opportunity for Britain's athletes to perform on the world's greatest stage in front of a home crowd, the Games offer an equally important opportunity for our country as it welcomes the world," said Lord Coe.

"We have made strong progress across a number of key areas in the last year, and our team has built excellent partnerships with our stakeholders and sponsors.

"As we pass the ‘two years to go' milestone, all the building blocks are in place to enable everyone to plan their summer of 2012."