Niall Fitzgerald will join Reuters on a salary of £500,000 (€743,043) when he takes over from Sir Christopher Hogg as chairman of the news and information provider in October.

The amount is almost twice the £262,000 earned by Hogg in 2003 and will make Fitzgerald one of the best-paid chairmen of a FTSE 100 company. Hogg's pay has been hiked to £290,000 for 2004 but it still falls short of the pay for Fitzgerald, who is expected to work two or three days a week for the company.