About 88,000 staff at Zara owner Inditex are to share more than 562 million euros (£499 million) in bonuses and commission after the fashion giant posted a 7% rise in profits.
The bonus and commission windfall includes a 42 million euro (£37.3 million) extra payout under its profit-sharing plan and will be made to all staff working at the group for more than two years.
It comes as Inditex, the world's largest clothing retailer, posted net profits of 3.37 billion euros (£3 billion) for 2017, up from 3.18 billion euros (£2.82 billion) in 2016.
But it revealed its slowest global like-for-like sales growth for three years, at 5%, with the chain hit by a tough year for fashion retailers that has also knocked rivals such as H&M.
Inditex's sales growth is down from 10% in 2016, although the group said all countries including the UK saw like-for-like sales growth last year.
It added that sales in local currencies rose 10% over the year and had slowed since the year-end, rising by 9% between February 1 and March 11.
Its gross margin was also down to 56.3% from 57% in 2016 after the strengthening of the euro last year.
The group is particularly vulnerable to exchange rate movements as it makes more than half of its sales in non-euro currencies, but reports results in euros.
But the bright spot for the group, which also owns Massimo Dutti and Pull&Bear among a raft of brands, was its online sales - up 41% over the year and now accounting for 10% of group revenues.
This came as it boosted its online delivery offering, adding a next-day service in the UK and other countries, as well as same-day delivery in central London, Madrid, Paris, Istanbul, Shanghai and Taipei, and Sydney as its latest addition.
Chairman and chief executive Pablo Isla said it was a year of "solid growth".
He praised the "unique strength of our integrated stores and online model and its significant growth potential".
Results showed the number of stores rose 2.5% to 7,475 last year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here