Bonuses for failure at Network Rail?

[digitaltoast]

Sorry if I missed a thread already - I did search, but am I the only one who thinks this is a bit nuts?

Rail infrastructure firm Network Rail has said staff will receive total bonuses of £55m, as it announced annual pre-tax profit of £1.6bn for 2007-08.

Chief executive Iain Coucher will get a reward of £305,581.

On Friday Network Rail confirmed its three top directors were each receiving performance-related annual bonuses of more than £200,000.

Also, under a separate incentive plan, the top trio are also getting bonuses of more than £153,000, with Mr Coucher getting £205,000.

Ex-chief executive John Armitt will get a £178,000 bonus for being for being at the helm for part of the past three years.

 

[DescendingSadly]

Shame they couldn't dish out some of that hefty sum to the front line staff who actually do the graft!

(and maybe the Slash too...)

 

[thelem]

No, actually that seems quite small. Going on the above figures, staff bonuses were less than 3.5% of PROFITS (not turnover), which sounds pretty low to me. The chief executive got a bonus of about 0.2% of profits - with a budget the size of Network Rail's the difference between a good chief executive and a bad chief executive can be millions of pounds in operating costs, so £300k is small change.

I'm not sure how many front line staff there are, but I'm sure £300k wouldn't go very far.

 

[The Planner]

The grafters will get about 0.3% of what Mr Coucher does.

 

[digitaltoast]

The chief executive got a bonus of about 0.2% of profits - with a budget the size of Network Rail's the difference between a good chief executive and a bad chief executive can be millions of pounds in operating costs, so £300k is small change.

Sorry. I just don't get what you are saying. Network Rail has failed heavily on many fronts - the only thing it's done is succeed in making a huge profit - from OUR taxes and fares, while being fined £14m (paid for by OUR taxes!). They over-run work (quite regularly recently) and we recently learnt that there won't be a "proper" service 'til 2014.

A bonus is something paid for GOOD service, not lame management. Proportion of turnover has NOTHING to do with it.
The BA Chairman at least had the decency not to take his.

 

[TDK]

Sorry. I just don't get what you are saying. Network Rail has failed heavily on many fronts - the only thing it's done is succeed in making a huge profit - from OUR taxes and fares, while being fined £14m (paid for by OUR taxes!). They over-run work (quite regularly recently) and we recently learnt that there won't be a "proper" service 'til 2014.

A bonus is something paid for GOOD service, not lame management. Proportion of turnover has NOTHING to do with it.
The BA Chairman at least had the decency not to take his.

The tax payer pays these costs from the huge subsidy NR receive is this not correct? Maybe this money should be offset with the 14m fine that went straight back into the treasury, taxes have gone up!!!!!