Well Paid For Failure

BP chief executive Bob Dudley’s pension scheme “excessive,” after the oil tycoon pocketed £1.7 million in pension benefits last year.

Dudley’s award is roughly 10 times the average pension payment received by a FTSE 100 director and 62 times the average annual salary in the UK.

The oil giant also announced it would be cutting 200 full-time onshore positions and 100 contractor roles from its North Sea workforce.

Luke Hildyard, deputy director of High Pay Centre, said “A pay package of this size seems excessive, but three out of four members of the BP remuneration committee are also former top executives and management consultants, who are unlikely to see anything out of the ordinary about a multi-million pound pay package. Former executives are instinctively sympathetic to other people in their position and think they deserve to paid huge amounts of money. They perhaps don't understand how a £1.7 million pension payment might look to ordinary workers across the wider economy who are seeing their pensions cut to the bone. This type of arrangement is fairly typical of a major UK company and highlights why the executive pay setting process needs to be accountable to people from outside the executive class,” he added.