BT’s CEO Loses Bonus as Chairman Sir Mike Rake Plans Departure

The CEO of BT Group, Gavin Patterson, has lost out on a bonus worth £290,000 due to a rise in customer complaints, but don’t feel too bad for him as his pay for 2015 still increased to £5.4m from £4.6m in 2014. Meanwhile Chairman Sir Mike Rake has agreed to stay on until “at least” September 2017.

The telecoms giant has already acknowledged it’s customer service failings and have since promised to turn things around on several fronts. As well as facing stiffer quality of service regulation from Ofcom (Strategic Review), BT has also promised to hire 1,000 extra staff for customer care roles (here) and answer “more than” 80% of its customers’ calls in the United Kingdom by the end of 2016 (here).

A BT Spokesperson said:

“The company is determined to do better on service and has announced detailed plans to meet rising customer expectations in the coming year.”

Never the less BT Group’s independent board members have reportedly asked the operator’s long standing Chairman, Sir Mike Rake, to stay on in his position for a little longer because BT’s CEO is still considered to be “relatively new” (IBTimes).

“The board has asked me — and I have agreed — to stay on as chairman until at least September 2017,” said Rake after picking up £706K for his four-day-a-week role this year. Rake is now on course to become BT’s longest-serving board member and he’s expected to hit the 10 year mark next year.

Patterson was only appointed to the role of CEO in 2013 and since then we’ve seen a bunch of big moves into the TV and Mobile space, not least via the launch of BT Sport and the EE merger. BT also looks set to dodge a regulatory bullet by avoiding the loss of Openreach to full independence, but this is still an on-going matter for closed door discussion.