(Bloomberg) -- Sky Plc’s Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Darroch has pocketed 13.4 million pounds ($17.6 million) after steering the British pay-TV company into the arms of Comcast Corp.

The 56-year-old sold his 775,772 shares in Sky to the U.S. cable giant as it prepares to complete the $39 billion takeover, according to a filing Friday. Sky’s value soared during a protracted bidding war involving Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, Walt Disney Co. and Comcast that was settled by an auction last month.

Darroch, the grandson of a miner, was already one of the best paid CEOs in Britain, taking home 39 million pounds in the last three years. He helped build Sky into a pan-European broadcaster with 23 million customers, luring customers with live Premier League soccer and hit dramas.

He joined as Chief Financial Officer in 2004 and led the company since 2007. Sky’s current CFO Andrew Griffith also sold his Sky shares, earning 3.7 million pounds.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Mayes in London at jmayes9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Thomas Pfeiffer

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