British Gas investors urged to reject CEO’s ‘obscene’ £2.4m pay check as thousands face job cuts

Iain Conn collects 44% pay rise despite losing hundreds of thousands of customers and seeing share price halved

British Gas investors have been urged to revolt over chief executive Iain Conn’s “obscene” £2.4m pay check.

Shareholders will have a chance next month to block Mr Conn’s 44 per cent pay rise, which comes as 4,000 British Gas employees are set to be made redundant by next year.

Mr Conn’s pay is equivalent to 120 times that of a worker in British Gas’ customer service centre.

The pay rise was confirmed this month just days after British Gas workers in Leeds and Glasgow were told their sites were under threat of closure due to the latest round of cuts. The company has already shed 5,000 staff since 2015.

The GMB union has written to pension funds and other institutional investors in British Gas’ parent company Centrica, which is to hold its AGM on 13 May.

British Gas lost 742,000 customers last year and has seen its share price more than halved under Iain Conn’s leadership, hitting a two-decade low this year.

In February, British Gas blamed the government’s energy price cap as it warned that profits would be lower than forecast. Britain’s biggest energy company sought a judicial review of the way regulator Ofgem set the cap, which is designed to protect consumers from rip-off tariffs.

British Gas faces becoming one of a number of firms to face shareholder anger at soaring executive pay.

Hammerson, which owns shopping centres including the Bullring in Birmingham, has been criticised for handing multimillion pound bonuses to top executives despite the company’s share price falling 40 per cent in a year.

Justin Bowden, GMB national secretary, called on Centrica shareholders to reject Mr Conn’s “frankly staggering” remuneration.

“GMB has 15,000 members in Centrica, many of whom are themselves shareholders, who are being asked to accept redundancies, cuts to their pensions and a series of largely detrimental changes to their terms and conditions.

“Ordinary Centrica workers are not being offered 4 per cent pay rises, never mind 44 per cent.

“The resulting loss of confidence since the announcement of Iain Conn’s planned rise runs right through the company from top to bottom.

“From call centre staff earning a 120th of the CEO’s pay to the very highest levels of management, [they] are utterly demoralised by the poor judgement and lack of leadership.

“It is a classic boardroom case of, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’. GMB urges shareholders to vote against this obscene pay rise.”