£2.6m GOLDEN GOODBYE
What Moya Greene stands to collect AFTER quitting as boss of the Royal Mail
THE outgoing boss of Royal Mail will collect up to £2.6m from the company after quitting her post.
Moya Greene, 63, stepped down as chief executive at the start of June but continues to be paid.
She is also in line for bonuses and shares – as well as cash for flights to her native Canada. And she will collect a near £1m pay off from the postal service – taking the total she can collect having relinquished the top job to as much as £2.6m.
Greene’s potential package is about 90 times the average salary of Royal Mail’s 142,000 workers of £28,724. Campaigners last night condemned the bonanza, which comes at a time of mounting outrage over executive pay.
A spokesman for the Communication Workers union said: ‘It’s an outrageous sum of money when you consider what the average postal worker takes home.’
Mother-of-one Greene has earned nearly £12m since taking charge of Royal Mail in 2010, including £1.8m last year. She is credited with leading it through the biggest ever public share-offer in the uK, and negotiating with unions and politicians.
Greene announced in April that she would step down on June 1 as chief executive. She will remain on the board until the AGM in July, and then advise replacement Rico Back until September.
Greene is getting her chief executive-level salary of £547,800 as well as pensions and benefits paid each month until mid-September. She is also entitled to a bonus for that period – amounting to a potential £547,800 for the period since June 1.
Her payment for loss of office of £914,000 includes one year’s salary and a bonus of £367,000. The deal was approved by the government in 2010 before Royal Mail was privatised.
On top of that, Greene also has yet to collect 99,663 shares due to vest in June 2020.
She could get a further 152,288 shares, depending on performance, due to vest in July 2019 and 2020. All those shares could bring in a further £1.2m based on current share price of around 502p.
Greene was recruited from Canada’s postal service Canada Post and tasked with privatising struggling Royal Mail despite previous efforts being derailed by political revolt. Royal Mail hit £10bn sales for the first time last year and made profits before special costs of £694m. But it has been dogged by rows over pay and pensions with unions, and fewer letters being sent. Shares hit highs of around 600p last month, but fell to 502.4p last night.
A Royal Mail spokesman said: ‘We appreciate that executive remuneration is a sensitive subject in the current economic environment. Moya Greene is an exceptional executive and we have made the right remuneration arrangements to reward the generation of shareholder value in the longer term and to honour our contractual obligations.’