The boss of gambling firm Bet365 has reportedly earned a pay packet worth £469 million in a single year.

Denise Coates, 53, is said to have earned a £421 million salary in a 12-month period, along with £48 million in dividends – thought to be one of the biggest packages in UK corporate history.

She founded the online gambling company in the early 2000s in Stoke-on-Trent after spotting the potential of internet betting to revolutionise the industry.

The company told the BBC the arrangements were “appropriate and fair”.

The salary is a significant hike on the basic wage of almost £277 million that she took home in the year ending March 2019, when she was comfortably the highest-paid boss in the country.

Ms Coates, Bet365’s joint chief executive, was the country’s largest taxpayer for the second year running, according to the last annual Sunday Times Tax List.

She and her family, who are worth £7.166 billion, had a tax liability of £573 million last year.

Ms Coates has previously used the company’s annual report to highlight her charity work.

In the year up to the end of March 2019 she donated £85 million from the business’s coffers to the Denise Coates Foundation, up from £75 million the year before.