The boss of Tesco was paid a record-breaking £10.8million last year – the largest earnings deal ever dished out to a British supermarket boss.
Ken Murphy topped up his £1.5million annual salary with extras, including a £3.4million bonus and £5.7million in long-term share awards.
The 59-year-old has taken home more than £41million since he became chief executive of the UK’s largest grocer in 2020.
The latest haul raised eyebrows after both Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused retailers of ‘profiteering’ as petrol prices rose after the start of the war in the Middle East earlier this year.
Those comments in March, after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, sparked a fierce backlash as supermarkets battled to keep a lid on prices and shelves stocked.
The Government was also accused of lining its own coffers as fuel duty receipts soared. At the time, Asda boss Allan Leighton said it was scandalous for ministers to be ‘pointing fingers’ at retailers.
Record-breaker: Ken Murphy topped up his £1.5m annual salary with extras, including a £3.4m bonus and £5.7m in long-term share awards
Attention has turned to Murphy’s pay packet amid wider discussions over bumper awards in recent years, while supermarket prices have been in the spotlight due to the war’s pressure on inflation.
The latest increase means he was handed 420 times the sum paid to the average employee at the supermarket.
Andrew Speke, of the High Pay Centre, said the award was ‘concerning’ as the average Tesco worker’s pay rose by less than 5 per cent last year.
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Tesco remuneration committee chief Melissa Bethell said the pay policy ‘reflects the complexities of managing a large-scale operation’.
She added the pay packets of Murphy and finance chief Imran Nawaz – who earned a total of £5.7million last year – were due to the pair ‘meeting or exceeding challenging targets in a competitive sector, creating value for all stakeholders’.
Tesco made £2.4billion in profits in the year to February 28, an 8.5 per cent increase on the year before.
Jonathan De Mello, founder of JDM Retail, said: ‘Murphy’s pay packet will inevitably draw fire during this period of continued financial austerity, but executive pay at this level is tied unyieldingly to performance, and Tesco has fundamentally delivered for its shareholders.’
He said that profiteering accusations ‘misunderstand the structural realities of the UK grocery sector’ with Tesco ‘operating on incredibly thin margins’.
Murphy has a return to a 30 per cent market share in his sights after Tesco’s slice of the sector hit 29.4 per cent, its highest in a decade, last December, figures from Worldpanel by Numerator showed.
Dan Coatsworth, at AJ Bell, said: ‘Tesco would rightfully argue that Murphy has helped to win more market share and keep rivals at bay. Critics would say no one deserves that much money when success is down to an army of workers, not one person.’
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