Profit plunge and 10,000 job losses fail to dent executives' pay
Wolseley bosses awarded themselves a total of £873,000 in bonuses this year, despite announcing more than 10,000 job losses.
Chip Hornsby, chief executive at the materials firm, took home a total of £1.2m in the year to 31 July 2008, up 14% on last year's £1.1m.
Within that figure was a performance bonus of £377,000, despite a fall in pre-tax profit from £634m to £145m over the period.
Earlier in the year, the company announced 7,700 job losses across the group, followed by a further 3,000 this week.
Housebuilder Redrow recently came under fire from observers for paying out bonuses despite making redundancies.
One analyst said: “They forget there is always the option to waive the bonuses. It seems they don't realise how this looks to the outside.”
Rob Marchbank, managing director of Wolseley UK, took home a total of £900,000 - which was £40,000 more than last year and included a bonus of £154,000.
Despite the redundancies and profit slump, overall executive pay was up 5% from £4.1m to £4.4m.
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