Centrica Boss Admits £4.5m Salary ‘Impossible To Justify’ Amid Energy Cost Crisis
Centrica’s CEO Chris O’Shea said his £4.5 million salary was impossible to “justify” amid the ongoing energy cost crisis and customer hardship, revealing his company’s £3.3 billion pre-tax profit.
In a ranging interview with BBC Breakfast, host Charlie Stayt asked about the energy boss’ bonuses earned in 2023, to which O’Shea openly responded with a breakdown of his earnings.
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“My pay last year was £4.5 million,” he said. “That’s a salary, that’s a bonus in a long term share scheme. It’s a huge amount of money. I am incredibly fortunate. I don’t set my own pay; that’s set by a remuneration committee.”
The host asked: “You’ve been very honest with us and we appreciate that you’ve said it straightforwardly and you know that there are people watching this who are struggling to pay their bills, maybe to your company. What goes on in your head?”
O’Shea responded: “That’s the first bonus that I’d taken in my time in Centrica in a number of years I’ve not taken a bonus is because of the hardships the customers were facing. I thought it was right that we put a lot of our money, a lot of our profits, into supporting customers. But its you can’t justify a salary of that size.”
The host jumped in: “Can you say that again?”
O’Shea repeated: “You can’t justify a salary of that size. It’s a huge amount of money to anybody looking at this.”
“Why take it?” Stayt asked.
“It’s not for me to set my own pay,” O’Shea said. “It’s not for you to set your own pay, but you’ve got to recognize that when you’ve got people that are struggling, like the customer we saw, they are struggling for payments, and I look at my mum who’s on the Basic State Pension, it’s just impossible to justify, so there’s no point in trying to do that.”
The Office of National Statistics released figures Friday that showed 4 in 10 energy bill payers struggling to afford payments. Of the 52% of adults who reported that their cost of living had increased over the last month, 85% cited rising gas or electricity bills as a reason for this.
O’Shea emphasized Centrica’s focus on supporting customers, announcing the company’s commitment to allocate 10% of British Gas Energy profits to customer support. Throughout the interview O’Shea elaborated on Centrica’s strategies, including customer debt management, the stance on prepayment meters, and potential differentiated tariffs.
