Outgoing B&M boss Simon Arora lands a £5m pay bonanza – 270 times as much as the average employee
Departing B&M boss Simon Arora was paid £5million last year, the company’s annual report revealed.
That was up from £3.7million 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 £4.7million earned by Ken Murphy at Tesco and £2.2million handed to Alison Brittain at Premier Inn owner Whitbread.
Departing B&M boss Simon Arora (pictured with his wife Shalni) helped take B&M from a small, loss-making chain in north-west England to a retail giant with 709 stores
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 north-west 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 £4.7billion and profits of £619million.
But the payout also comes just weeks after Arora 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 £4million per year if he achieves his maximum bonus and long-term incentive goals.