Gas chief’s pay is enough to cover costs of 4,000 customers
BRITISH Gas boss Iain Conn was handed a pay package increase of almost 40 per cent two years ago – pocketing a staggering £4.15million.
His package was enough to pay the heating and lighting bills of nearly 4,000 cash-strapped customers.
Mr Conn, 55, is the chief executive of British Gas’s parent company Centrica, which he joined on January 1 2015.
Since then he has amassed a multimillion pound fortune despite the share price of the company plunging by nearly a half.
Mr Conn’s total remuneration jumped from £3.02million in 2015 to £4.15million in 2016. Much of the increase in his package was a £1.4million “recruitment award”, compensation for rewards he forfeited when he joined Centrica. He also received a recruitment award of £632,000 while his annual cash bonus rose by £178,000 to £759,000. However, his £925,000 salary remained frozen.
In October 2016 it was reported the family lived in a £2.7million mansion in Buckinghamshire – and also bought the £1.3million house next door.
The family’s main home boasts seven bedrooms and a £100,000 pool he had built in the garden.
The Edinburgh-born married father-ofthree owns a classic 1967 Mark II Jaguar – the same as the one in TV’s Inspector Morse. The car is worth up to £50,000 and is housed in a double garage that he had specially built. Last year his pay package was slashed by nearly 60 per cent to £1.7million after he was forced to apologise to shareholders when the company’s annual profits plunged by almost a fifth.
Centrica shareholders have previously challenged Mr Conn’s pay, with around 15 per cent of voting against his 2015 pay rise.
Before British Gas was privatised in 1986, its chief executive was paid £50,000 a year. In today’s money, that is roughly £110,000 – at least 15 times less than what the Centrica boss gets today.
In 1994, the then chief executive of British Gas, Cedric Brown, was at the centre of controversy after he was awarded a 75 per cent pay rise in a single year.