OUTGOING B&M BOSS ARORA LANDS £5M PAY BONANZA

DEPARTING B&M boss Simon Arora was paid £5m last year, the company’s annual report revealed.

That was up from £3.7m a year earlier and was made up of his £810,000 salary as well as pension contributions, benefits and bonuses.

Arora’s package outstrips the £4.7m earned by Ken Murphy at Tesco and £2.2m handed to Alison Brittain at Premier Inn owner Whitbread.

He was paid 270 times as much as the average B&M employee.

The bonanza comes after a successful tenure at the company he took over with his brother Bobby in 2004.

They took B&M from the brink of insolvency to the FTSE 100. It was a small, loss-making chain in northwest England and is now a retail giant with 709 stores and 300 more under the Heron Foods name in the UK, as well as 103 sites in France. In the year to March 26 B&M reported sales of £4.7bn and profits of £619m.

But the payout also comes just weeks after Arora (pictured with his wife Shalni) warned that B&M customers are cutting back as they grapple with a ‘significant increase in the cost of living’.

Arora will step down some time next year and is being replaced by current finance boss Alex Russo. Russo will be handed a £300,000 pay rise when he takes the top job, upping his base salary to £800,000.

His total pay could hit £4m per year if he achieves his maximum bonus and long-term incentive goals.