BT boss takes home £5.6m as pay and bonus package more than doubles

The chief executive of BT saw her pay and bonus package more than double last year to £5.6m, the biggest pay award to a boss of the telecoms company in more than a decade.Allison Kirkby, who stepped up from the board to take the helm in February 2024, received a pay, bonus and share award package of £5.58m for the year to the end of March.It is more than double the £2.48m package she received in her first year as chief executive, and significantly more than the largest pay award of £3.7m received by her predecessor, Philip Jansen, during his five years in charge.It is the largest remuneration package awarded to a BT boss since Ian Livingston received £9.4m in 2012-13.Kirkby received a £1m cash bonus, which pays out this month, and £3.25m in share awards as part of a long-term incentive programme. The share award will pay out over three years.BT’s share price has surged almost 80% since Kirkby started in the role, which is reflected in the scale of her bonus and share awards as the benefits of a long and expensive restructuring programme pay off.Kirkby has also been awarded a 3% increase to her £1.1m salary this year. The company said it had agreed a 4.1% increase with unions for employees earning less than £30,000 and a 3% rise for those on more than that.A spokesperson for BT said: “For the first time, Allison’s total remuneration this year includes the estimated value of her long-term share awards, which will release over the next three years. These have benefited from the significant increase in share price since Allison joined as chief executive in February 2024.”After years of criticism that a lack of investment in infrastructure was causing the UK to become a global laggard in mobile and broadband, in 2021 BT announced a £15bn investment to upgrade its network to full fibre broadband and 5G mobile masts.In 2023 it said it would cut 55,000 staff from a global workforce of 130,000 by 2030 as its infrastructure building programme came to an end and parts of its operation were made more efficient with AI.