Topdeck is where Skroo started his entrepreneurial career 40 years ago with an old double decker bus in London.

Skroo and his partners were able to sell Topdeck to Flight Centre for about $40 million on Wednesday, which is one of the reasons he won't be suffering too much from a  $225,000 drop in pay at the travel shop to $657,073 last year.

Another reason is the 97¢ per share dividend Flight Centre declared after its annual results on Wednesday, which means Skroo will be banking about $15 million in dividends from his stake in the company.

That will take his total dividend income for the year to $23.256 million. And keep in mind the fact that this income is fully franked.

Topping this off is the $1.6 million he pockets from the sale of his stake in Topdeck to Flight Centre.

How times change

The most interesting part of Flight Centre's annual results was the data from Skroo's annual review which explains why the travel agency is diversifying out of airfares, and Qantas is rapidly shrinking.

According to Skroo, when Qantas first took flight to London 67 years ago, a ticket would cost its passengers the equivalent of 85 weeks' pay for the average worker.

By the early 1980s, fares for the Kangaroo Route had dropped to the equivalent of six weeks' pay, or $1800.

You can still book flights for $1800 today.

Maybe Qantas can take heart from Skroo's comments last year that smaller is sometimes better.

"All our businesses are in teams with a maximum of seven people which are then congregated into villages and then into a tribe of around 25 villages," he told Fairfax Media.

"Generally businesses work best with fewer than 200 people ... humans have been hunter-gatherers for millions of years," he explains.

Driving backwards

McAleese boss, Mark Rowsthorn, also has a significant amount of stock in the company he runs - pity it has turned out to be one of the most disastrous floats of the year.

Along with the release of its full-year results, the company said it had finally decided on an "appropriate" pay packet for its accidental CEO.

The former Asciano boss will get base pay of $500,000, with incentives potentially adding another $750,000 a year.

Not that Rowsthorn needs the incentives to align his economic interests with fellow investors. A 1.5¢ rise in the share price will earn him more than his annual pay plus bonuses.

But the cash might come in handy for now given that no dividend was declared - which means no income from the 87 million shares Rowsthorn owns in the company. And his stock has lost about $80 million in value since its float late last year.

It's a long way from his days as CEO at Asciano in 2009. He collected  $2.7 million for that year, including a cash incentive of $741,678, despite the company flirting with financial collapse.

Investors were not particularly pleased that another executive managed to walk with a $2.16 million golden handshake despite the turmoil. The exec in question was chief operations officer, Don Telford.

Telford took over from Rowsthorn as chairman of McAleese in March this year when his former boss went back into the executive bunker. 

Action group applauded

The war might not be over, but the battle-hardened troops of Sydney's Willoughby Area Action Group could afford a little celebration amid the continued brawl over Nine Entertainment's old TV digs.

WAAG was recently nominated by its local mayor for a North Sydney Community Award for the work it has done in representing the people against the media machine.

"The award program is an initiative of our local federal member, Joe Hockey and the awards are made each year to people and groups who have made a significant contribution to the community," a WAAG newsletter reports.

CBD is told that Nine has since appealed to the Land and Environment Court contending that the 450-apartment project does not constitute an over-development of the site.

Got a tip? ckruger@fairfaxmedia.com.au