Royal Mail boss gets £1.1m total pay as stamp prices rise by 40%

The chief executive of Royal Mail has received a total salary of £1.1 million, including a bonus of £371,000 just weeks after inflation-busting increases in the cost of stamps for residential customers.

Moya Greene’s basic salary was unchanged from the £498,000 she received last year but with the bonus, £38,000 in benefits and a £200,000 cash contribution to her pension took the total remuneration to more than £1 million. Her pay could increase by a further £480,000 if she hits targets set over the course of the next three years as part of a long-term incentive plan.

Royal Mail has just announced that it has returned to profit after four years of losses. The firm made £211 in profits last year, helped by its successful junk mail business which now brings in more than ten per cent of the firm’s overall revenue.

Announcing the Royal Mail results but before her pay details were released, Miss Greene said: “It would be anything but ungracious of me to have anything to say about my compensation other than to say ‘it is true I am well paid.”

A spokesman from the Vince Cable’s Department for Business said: “Royal Mail’s financial performance has significantly improved, the bonus payments are rewards for success not failure.

“Bonuses have been paid where stretching targets have been achieved. But none of the Royal Mail board got a full bonus this year because not all targets were met.”

However, Shadow postal affairs minister, Ian Murray MP said: “At a time when the public are furious about levels of boardroom pay it is extraordinary that the chief executive of Royal Mail will be awarded such a generous and disproportionate package relative to the performance of the company.

“This has happened just a matter of weeks after consumer stamp prices rose by up to 40 per cent, the public purse has taken on its £8billion pension fund deficit and ordinary people up and down the Country are facing a squeeze on living standards with frozen pay and higher costs.”

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