BT to Freeze Pay of CEO Philip Jansen at £1.1m Until Retirement UPDATE
Reports indicated that the UK broadband and mobile giant, BT Group, will freeze the base pay of its CEO, Philip Jansen, at £1.1m – to be renewed on a rolling basis – until he leaves the company. Mr Jansen’s annual salary was fixed for 5 years when he joined, but this agreement was due to expire.
According to Sky News, the decision is expected to be confirmed when BT publishes its next annual report, which is expected imminently. The move comes shortly after the operator revealed that it was planning to cut up to 55,000 more jobs (about 40% of their entire 130,000 strong workforce) by the end of this decade (here), although a big chunk of that is likely to reflect the unavoidable end of their national “full fibre” (FTTP) rollout via network access provider Openreach.
In total, BT Group’s CEO was paid £3.089 million during the operator’s last financial year. In prior years, we’ve seen his total pay yo-yo between levels of £3.35m to £2.6m.
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UPDATE 1pm
The operator’s Annual Report is out now and confirms the above information.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Aw, how sad. Notice they say base pay, so that don’t include any extra perks he will get. Maybe we should have a collection for the poor thing
Agreed, with the added perks and bonuses, he’s hardly going to be out of pocket.
What they should have done is announce the freeze includes bonuses as the freeze pay is more than generous.
And it will be reviewed, so no surprises there.
He don’t deserved to get that pay £1.1m. Greedy!
Phil, he works for a living, likely very long hours, and neither you or I have any idea how much value he adds to the company. Jealousy is not a great character trait.
Is he overpaid relative to his workforce? Almost certainly. Blame the system that’s enabled CEOs to have such insane pay relatively to the average in their company, not a guy who was able to negotiate that deal.
The only system that needs blaming here is the one that violates contracted prices to allow arbitrary prices increases to fund this man’s income.
It is actually a good counter argument to show this article when someone is moronically defending the greed believing the lie that it is about inflation, as if most people’s salaries have risen the same way. Inflation disproportionately affects the poor and metrics are designed to trick them into believing things are not as bad but in the real world eggs are 3x more expensive and a steak can go for 7 quid at Sainsburys. But people will keep believing that taxes which cause even more inflation are great!
Oki doke.
Not just inflation + taxes but also the green agenda causing bills to skyrocket
Of course Lord Jansen won’t feel the pain buying food, he probably even has his own farm. Worlds smallest violin at his salary getting frozen
man i love it when people stick up for the billionaires. yes a company funded by the public, using a lot of infrastructure built by the government when it was GPO using taxpayer money, that charges the public and pays their CEO £1.1m is totally fair – blame the system right? * cringe *
A single bonus (eg xmas) for him would probably be more than most peoples annual salary. And he probably gets several of them a year.
Oh yeah. Unless that’s his entire compensation package the sky’s the limit as far as stock options and stock grants go. Could also be piling funds into his pension. Loads of ways to ensure his base salary could be zero while his actual package is 8 figures.
OK, boys and girls, instead of criticising Jansen’s salary, perhaps you can tell the world what a reasonable salary for that job is?
One that is locked and performance related with zero perks.
Until retirement this guy could afford to retire tomorrow and still be better off than most the Uk
It really warms the cockles of my heart to see people finally waking up to the obscenities in our work reward culture.
reward? what reward is that?
Something to add from the report:
“Our four customer-facing brands underpin our relationships with millions of customers. The trust in these brands means that customers look to us for connectivity solutions, and more. This year we announced EE will become our flagship consumer brand, while Plusnet continues to be our value brand. BT will be our business brand in the UK and around the world.”
Answers the Plusnet question, Here to stay and continues on as the Value brand. I believe it’s been mostly not mentioned when talking EE for consumer and BT for business.
As far as BT are concerned i am more interested in wondering when they are bringing out the 1.8gbit service. 1.1M is a lot yes but the public may not know exactly what is expected from him for that money. Compared to USA its chicken feed. And dont forget dentists can get 250k easily if they want. Python programmers can get 130k. So the real question is if he is worth 1.1M or who would do his job better and for less money?
Don’t you bring your reason and logic here, mate!
Any mention of executive pay brings out the ill informed whiners, most of who have no idea how demanding the role of large company executive can be. I’ve worked closely with a reasonable sample of the captains of British industry, and I am in no hurry to be in their shoes. Their time is never their own, everybody defers upwards to them, they are expected to be continuously available for corporate crises, to be at the beck and call of investors, banks, politicians, journalists, regulators, and the many pressure groups and vested interests. On weekends and holidays they’re still required to be on call, and to check their work messages.
I’ve watched well meaning people have their energy ground out of them by the demands of such a job, and anybody who thinks Jansen is overpaid at £1.1m is talking out of their bottom. Yes, I’d love the money. But take that and take on his responsibilities? No way.
Reason why salaries are so low in the UK is because why get a raise when the state just takes away half of it with a double income tax. The UK is in top 5 worst top tax countries in Europe
In comparison in the US the top income tax only starts at 550k and is only 37%, as opposed to the UK which is now just 125k and 45% + NI aka 2nd income tax
Tax rates don’t go crazy until a person breaks £100k. The vast majority of people won’t. Those that do there is an enormous marginal tax rate for a while that needs sorting. The percentage of my income going on income tax is way out of line.
UK salaries are low because productivity is so poor. Productivity growth stalled in 2008 then took another hit after 2016.
Remember to add the state and local taxes to the federal ones in the USA.
Why be productive when the government will just steal most of it?
There are no state income taxes in Florida and Texas
My wife is a doctor and she always refuses overtime work because what is the point when the state steals half of her overtime
XGS is On: “UK salaries are low because productivity is so poor. Productivity growth stalled in 2008 then took another hit after 2016.”
And productivity is low because investment is much lower than almost all other OECD countries (both public and private sector), and has been for decades. Not helped by the obsession British governments have for encouraging trade with cheaper labour locations that have wiped out our industrial base, and energy policy that has ensured we have business electricity prices that are consistently amongst the highest in the developed world.
Not just Texas and Florida being great states that have no state income taxes but also Alaska, Nevada and Tennessee
There is no reason to invest when the govt keeps putting up taxes. They are now parading the deal they’ve done with Walkers because the UK needs more crap food
And yes the lunatic green agenda causing energy prices to go up is a feature, not a bug. Now they are mandating everyone to have smart meters because then it allows the state to have the power to shut down your electricity
Maybe Andrew if board members pay wasn’t so high the rest of the workforce could be paid “properly”, resulting in far better company results and turn over? Just saying.
@Andrew G. How out of touch are you. CEO’s do not deserve anywhere near the amount they get paid. They do bugger all. Your post is delusional. They are not available all the time. They are lazy over paid greedy fat cats who now just have a PR team doing their job.
All the CEO’s that I have worked for are not worth any amount of money. They are lairs, cheats and thieves.
Should be a pay cut in half and then another one to come. Greedy ****