This £1.2m insult to every traveller

REWARD for failure is a familiar theme in corporate Britain, but sometimes an executive receives a payment so breathtaking in its insensitivity it still has the power to shock.

The near £1.2million package handed to David Brown, the boss of rail and bus group Go-Ahead, is one of those times.

Not because of its size – in City terms, a million or so a year is merely modest fare – but because the bonuses handed to Mr Brown are such an insult to travellers on the benighted rail lines he runs.

The directors who approved the largesse must have the hides of rhinos to not realise how his million-pound payday would go down with the despairing commuters who are forced to use the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern services he controls.

Either that, or their own wealth insulates them so much from ordinary life that they fail to grasp quite how cynical and uncaring his jackpot seems.

True, he voluntarily went without his bonus last year and the year before. That, however, has not stopped him from taking home nearly £9.5million in total in the eight years he has presided over the company and the all-too-frequent misery it has inflicted on passengers.

Unlike some corporate grandees, Mr Brown doesn’t appear to indulge tastes for private jets and gin palaces. At 57, he has spent his entire career in the transport industry, after a geography degree at Reading University and a Diploma in Transport at the University of London.

In 1983 he began his career with London Transport – he has managed a bus depot – and during a lengthy career he has flitted between the public and private sector.

He lives with his wife Gretchen and two teenage children in a large mortgagefree house in the West London suburb of Ealing, bought for £899,500 in July 2005 and now worth around £2million.

In a rare local newspaper interview, he once said he takes the tube to his offices in central London and that he eats a sandwich at his desk for lunch.

The justification for the payouts is that despite the passenger woes in the rail division, its buses have done well and the financial performance has been strong. The City is clearly happy about that – traders pushed the shares up by more than £2 yesterday.

That, incidentally, means another boost for Mr Brown. He has more than 80,000 shares so the rise added another £160,000 on paper to his wealth.

It is a hoard that most travellers, and indeed many of his frequently disgruntled staff, can only dream about.