Thames Water’s chief executive has defended receiving a £195,000 bonus just three months into the job by essentially saying he’s doing an incredible job and deserves it.
Chris Weston, alongside chairman Sir Adrian Montague, and chief financial officer Steve Buck, was being quizzed on the water company’s “hair-raising” financial situation by the MPs at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee this week.
Thames Water currently has “massive debts”, and so MPs wanted to know if it was wise for Weston to accept such a large bonus so soon after beginning the job.
Weston said:
“I think in the first three months I did make a difference.
“I started to put in place the new organisational structure, I started to give people confidence and reassurance about how proud they could be of the job they did and what we were setting out to do.
“And that helped stabilise the company and I think that was important.”
“It is a big ship to turn around. It is very difficult.”
He accepted that his firm’s levels of debt were “excessive,” but said “debt is a very important part of the model of the water industry”. He also admitted that on several occasions last year Thames Water had come very close to running out of money entirely.
“There were times in the last year that we had five weeks’ liquidity – and running a £20 billion corporation on five weeks’ liquidity, honestly, it’s hair-raising.”
Chris Weston receives an annual base salary of £850,000, and is eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 156% of his salary, which potentially brings his total annual earnings to around £2.25 million. His remuneration package also includes a pension allowance equivalent to 12% of his salary and a £15,000 annual car allowance. Alright for some!
The maddest part about this of course is that Chris Weston had been working at the company for 3 MONTHS before bagging an £195,000 bonus. Most of us wouldn’t have passed a standard probation period at our jobs at that point, but this guy’s earning more than than most people will in 5 years just for three months’ work. At a company that’s in massive debt, and which knows the government is going to bail them out every time they’re in trouble.
Who knows – maybe this could be the trigger point for the government to step in and take over? It’s all well and good having private companies run public services, but not when they do a terrible job of it and our living costs are shooting through the roof every year. Which is the lesser of two evils, at the end of the day?
Furthermore, was Chris Weston’s bonus ultimately justified, in the eyes of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee? My guess is he’ll keep every penny.
For the CEO who got rinsed online for posting a photo of himself crying on LinkedIn after he sacked a bunch of employees, click HERE.
