Gas board's wrong turn: Centrica boss's £8.2m payout is a bad look, says ALEX BRUMMER By Alex Brummer for the Daily Mail Updated: 22:00, 5 June 2024 e-mail View comments By the standards of pay revolts, the vote against Chris O’Shea’s £8.2million award at Centrica hardly registers.
Nevertheless, it was never a good look for the chief executive of a utility, reaping windfall profits as the UK emerges from an energy crisis, to be granted such a package. When it comes to executive pay, O’Shea occupies a particularly sensitive job. It was at Centrica-owned British Gas that Britain’s aversion to fat cat pay emerged in 1994 when the then boss Cedric Brown was lampooned as ‘Cedric the Pig’ after his pay exploded 900 per cent in the decade following privatisation.
The row eventually led to Adrian Cadbury’s first attempt to codify governance. Payout: Centrica boss Chris O’Shea earned £8.2m last year as the energy giant reaped windfall profits O’Shea has had the good grace to recognise that the combination of his salary, bonus and shares was ‘a huge amount of money’ and he was ‘incredibly fortunate.
’ The 9.9 per cent vote against the pay deal should be seen as much as a rap across the knuckles for Centrica’s governance as for O’Shea personally. He is the beneficiary of a more than 300 per cent rise in the share price since the low point reached in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Excessive boardroom pay in the UK is driven by two forces. Many bosses keep .
