Outgoing boss of discount retailer B&M handed £5m payout

theguardian.com:

The outgoing chief executive of discount retailer B&M earned £5m last year – more than the boss of Tesco.

Simon Arora’s pay package rose by more than a third to the highest level ever for the company – and 270 times that of the average B&M worker – despite flatlining profits and falling sales in the year to the end of March as more rival shops reopened from the Covid pandemic. B&M enjoyed “essential retailer” during the lockdowns.

Arora, who is to step down next year, booked a long-term share bonus worth £2.6m and an annual bonus of £1.5m, half of which is paid in shares, on top of his basic salary of £810,000 before benefits such as a company car and pension payments. He will not be able to cash in the share bonus until August 2024.

The pay package was more than the £4.75m Tesco paid its chief executive, Ken Murphy, last year. Murphy’s pay included the highest annual bonus awarded by the supermarket since 2016.

Tesco has a market value of nearly £19bn, compared with B&M’s £4bn.

B&M’s remuneration committee awarded Arora the maximum long-term bonus possible after the company met targets on returns to shareholders and the performance of its share price compared with similar businesses.

He only missed out by just over 4% of the maximum possible annual bonus after taking longer than expected to launch B&M’s transactional website and missing underlying sales growth targets.

B&M’s remuneration committee said in its report: “The committee considered that overall performance had been very strong during 2021-22 and that the [annual bonus] outcomes appropriately reflected individual and business outcomes. No discretion was used in assessing the outcomes.”

Arora has been awarded a 3% pay rise for the current year taking his basic salary