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…
Executive officers get large compensation because they have responsibility over the organisation.
That means that when “accidents happen”, they bear responsibility, and should not receive their bonuses and possibly should be fired.
If a potable water company is unable to deliver potable water to their customers, it’s a gross failure of the leadership to take all measures to ensure that the company does what it exists to do. This means they did not do a “perfect job”.
You clearly and completely misunderstood what I was saying.
It’s a charged topic so it makes sense. Frustrating nonetheless.
Can you expand on the point? If they can’t deliver water the CEO shouldn’t be paid out; that’s the point of the salary/bonus ratio.
My point was that their pay is usually structured in a way that the base pay is a small percentage of their compensation and their bonuses are a virtually fixed part of their package and tied to company performance. They tend to not get any bonus when performing exceptionally poorly (e.g. going out of business). This means you get these bonus headlines even if they didn’t get a particularly big bonus at all and maybe even had their wage docked. These kinds of headlines are incendiary.
The magnitude of pay really does not matter much at all for this discussion.
Of course it does. Especially so considering this case. In this case not only did the water company plead guilty but the CEO was forced to resign (rightly so). And THEN given a bonus.
In this case, Susan Davy’s salary was £561,000 with contracted bonus of £191,000 (in shares, I believe). The bonus for the previous year had been £250k. Again, this factual information doesn’t fit the point you keep repeating. Facts get in the way.
Ok, but that does not counter my point.
Now you’re just trolling: it LITERALLY contradicts your point. I know politicians think they can get away with it, but simply repeating something doesn’t make it true.
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