Now BAE joins list of those charged with executive excess

The embattled defence company BAE Systems paid its chief executive a £115,000 bonus last year even though the company recorded a £616m loss and its share price collapsed by two-thirds, leading to widespread calls for boardroom sackings.

Mike Turner, who took over as chief executive last March after the ousting of John Weston, was paid a total of £709,000 – a 24 per cent increase on the £570,000 he received in 2001. Including gains on share options, Mr Turner's total remuneration was £751,961.

BAE's annual report and accounts also show that Mr Weston received total remuneration last year of £1.6m. This was made up of £130,000 in salary, £520,000 in compensation for loss of office and a one-off payment into his pension fund of £939,000. Mr Weston, 52, took early retirement and is now receiving a pension worth £166,243 a year.

The bonuses and pension top-ups are likely to anger shareholders and employees alike at a time when the BAE share price is at a 10-year low of 112p and the company is attempting to force staff to increase their own pension contributions.

Mr Turner's annual bonus last year represented 20 per cent of his base salary. A BAE spokesman said that although Mr Turner had missed all of the company's financial targets, he had met his own "personal targets" set at the beginning of the year, triggering the bonus. He declined to say what these personal targets were.

Sir Dick Evans, who has hung on as part-time chairman despite shareholder calls for him to go, saw his pay fall from £750,000 to £609,000 as he moved to a three-day week. The pay of the finance director, George Rose, also fell by £40,000 to £495,000 owing to a halving of his annual bonus.

In his letter to shareholders, Sir Dick admitted that it had been a "disappointing year" for the company. BAE was forced to take a £750m write-off because of cost and time overruns on two big equipment programmes – the Nimrod surveillance aircraft and the Astute nuclear-powered attack submarine. Since the end of the year it has also lost out on two other big Ministry of Defence programmes and been forced to share a £10bn aircraft carrier programme for the Royal Navy with Thales of France.