Nick Read: former Vodafone boss gets £4m pay and bonus package despite being ousted amid poor performance

Vodafone’s former boss Nick Read landed more than £4 million in salary and bonuses in financial year to March, despite being ousted at the end of 2022 amid poor performance.

Read picked up bumper pay package worth £3.9m for 2022-23, which also included a £1.6m shares award for a previous long-term bonus scheme that is due to pay out in August and a £406,000 cash award for dividends that would have been paid on those shares, the phone company's annual report shows.

On top of this, he received £270,375 in salary for the first three months of 2023, when he remained an adviser to the board, and will be paid £732,629 in lieu of salary, plus benefits, for the remainder of his 12 months’ notice period until March next year. Vodafone added it will pay up to £7,000 towards legal fees in connection with his departure and said he is entitled to “outplacement support” worth up to £50,000.

This is despite Read leaving Vodafone on 31 December after four years as group chief executive, just weeks after unveiling an £880m plan to slash costs and warning over job cuts and price hikes. His replacement, former chief financial officer Margherita Della Valle, has since repeatedly admitted that the firm’s performance has “not been good enough”.

Last month she swung the axe on 11,000 jobs across the group in a three-year cost-cutting plan. It came as Vodafone reported a 1.3% drop in full-year earnings to a lower-than-expected £12.8 billion and forecast little or no growth in earnings over the current financial year.

Della Valle also unveiled a mega merger with Three UK last week that will create Britain’s biggest mobile phone network worth £15 billion. There are more role cuts expected if the deal gets regulatory approval under plans to save more than £700m annually within five years, although the firms insisted more jobs would ultimately be created.