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

Shares in Ocado fell this week on reports of Tim Steiner’s potential exit, sinking to as low as 172.2p, short of the 2010 float price of 180p. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters View image in fullscreen Shares in Ocado fell this week on reports of Tim Steiner’s potential exit, sinking to as low as 172.2p, short of the 2010 float price of 180p. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters Spotlight falls on Ocado boss Tim Steiner’s £100m in payouts Reports claim replacement being lined up for co-founder amid concern over high pay and company’s struggling share price 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. View image in fullscreen 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. “This raises serious concerns about proportionality, accountability and fairness in the pay-setting process.” Steiner jointly set up the food delivery group in 2000 and led its stock market flotation 10 years later. A passionate advocate for the business, Steiner led the company through significant deals with Morrisons and Marks & Spencer and a recent tie-up with Asda , but has also faced shareholder unrest over his pay packets. Sky News reported last weekend that Ocado’s board had approached Niklas Heuveldop, the chief executive of Vonage, part of the Swedish telecoms group Ericsson. It is not clear whether Heuveldop is a preferred candidate for the role or how advanced Ocado’s board is in its succession planning. The company, which sells software and equipment to support online grocery shopping, said earlier this week that “the chief executive and the board continually engage in long-term succession planning and regularly engage with poten