Tesco CEO Ken Murphy gets £4.74mln pay packet
Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy pocketed £4.74mln in pay for the past year, the supermarket group’s annual report revealed.
The increased pay package comes amid a cost of living crisis, with a host of factors intensifying pressure on household budgets, with food prices expected to keep rising.
The latest inflation figures from the Office for National Statistics showed food and drink inflation rose to 5.9% from 5.1%, its highest rate since September 2011, showing that supermarkets were passing on more of the recent surge in producer prices.
The annual report says Murphy has been given a salary increase of 2.25% for 2022-23, with a basic salary of £1.54mln for the year to February. This means his overall remuneration package was 224 times higher than the median employee salary at Tesco, which is £21,217.
Murphy, who has been chief executive of the FTSE 100 grocer since October 2020, received £3.2mln in the form of a performance-based bonus, which was 86.2% of the maximum possible.
This was despite UK like-for-like sales being almost flat in the past year, and while pre-tax profits soared from £636mln to £2.03bn, this was largely thanks to lower Covid costs year-on-year and Tesco Bank returning to profitability only because of lower costs.
News of the pay package comes not long after Tesco chairman John Allan said Tesco some customers were starting to ration the amount of food they buy at the supermarket, with the country facing “real food poverty for the first time in a generation”.
Overall, the supermarket paid out more than £12mln to its senior leadership team, with new chief financial officer Imran Nawaz given £1.9mln.
Tesco emphasised that its stores and warehouse staff received a 5.8% pay raise.
