Spotlight falls on Ocado boss Tim Steiner’s £100m in payouts

The boss of Ocado has collected nearly £100m since the online grocery company floated on the stock market in 2010, despite its share price now languishing below its flotation level, analysis has shown. Tim Steiner, a former Goldman Sachs trader who co-founded the British technology company in 2000, is thought to be in discussions over his future after it emerged Ocado had approached at least one potential replacement. Analysis of Ocado reports by the High Pay Centre showed Steiner has received £94m in payouts, including share awards the value of which are likely to have changed from the time. The figure raises “serious concerns about proportionality, accountability and fairness” in the pay-setting process, campaigners said. Steiner’s payouts included nearly £59m for 2019 largely thanks to a string of deals to sell its grocery-picking tech to foreign supermarkets. Tim Steiner, chief executive officer of Ocado. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images Paddy Goffey, head of research at the High Pay Centre campaign group, said: “Tim Steiner’s pay trajectory illustrates a broader problem in the UK’s broken executive pay framework: compensation is increasingly shaped by sporadic, outsized awards, rather than being linked to genuine performance. “The £59m figure in 2019 reveals how incentive structures can create extreme spikes in pay that are hard to reconcile with company performance or improvements in the working conditions and pay of employees. …