A former water company boss has been handed a £270k bonus despite a parasite outbreak that sickened more than 140 people and caused a public health scandal.
Susan Davy stepped down as chief executive of Pennon, the group that owns South West Water, last year. She received the six-figure sum despite the board initially deciding to withhold the bonus following a public outcry.
South West Water pumped drinking water to thousands of homes in Devon containing cryptosporidium, a microscopic parasite that causes a highly infectious gastrointestinal illness.
The outbreak in May 2024 impa…
I didn’t claim that they were doing a perfect job. My criticism is on the phrasing of the headline and how CEO pay consists of a base pay and bonus with the bonus being large.
This means even a middling performance would expect a bonus payment.
This is independent of the amount of basepay. I didn’t claim they were poor or underpaid. I only claimed that their wage structure enables polarizing headlines independent of facts.
You said:
In this case it’s untrue. Not sure what your salary’s like but for 99% of the country, £440k is not a “low base pay”. By quibbling about the headline you try to distract from the grotesque nature of the way the water companies function.
I SAID RATIO. I never said their base pay wasn’t a living wage. You even quote me correctly and still interpret it your way.
Nothing to do with interpretation. Their base pay isn’t low (even as a ratio). You’ve not offered any evidence about the wage to bonus ratio (lack of evidence being your original gripe) You’re either willfully ideologically ignorant or disingenuous. I would guess from seeing other posts that it’s the latter.
10% of your wage being base pay is absolutely a low percentage. Example: https://www.ipcconsultants.com/blog/global-ceo-compensation-trends
Can you explain how that works for the least paid water CEO who earns £440k + bonus? Or the highest paid who receives £3.3 million + bonus?
I think I understand that you’re making some sort of abstract, generalised point about CEO pay - but can you explain how that applies here to the pay of water fat cats?
This applies here due to the phrasing of the headline - the headline implies that the CEO got rewarded for doing a bad job based on being paid a “big” bonus. But their pay structure is structured in a way where this is a usual and expected part of their pay.
This isn’t really about what water company CEOs are paid but journalists using CEO pay structure for an outrage inducing headline.