Bumper pay packet for mmO2 boss

12 April 2012

THE boss of BT's former mobile arm mmO2 received £1m pay and perks last year - during which it racked up a £10.2bn loss.

Peter Erskine, 51, was paid £1.01m, including £537,500 salary and £387,000 bonuses. This was up 38% on his £730,814 package the year before. In his ten years in charge of O2 and its previous guise BT Cellnet, he has accumulated a £2.5m pension pot.

Despite the huge loss, senior management divided more than £11m between them. Directors enjoy perks including a company car or cash equivalent, health and dental care for themselves and their wives, personal tax advice worth £5,000 a year and life cover. They also get free home security, using BT technology linking their phone lines to local police stations.

Last year's massive deficit, the fifth biggest in European history, followed a huge loss on the sale of O2's Dutch network and big write-offs on the billions splashed out on 3G licences.

Erskine did not play a part in bidding for the overhyped licences. O2 says he deserves his pay rise for overseeing a near-doubling in trading profits. It says: 'There's been a massive turnaround in the UK and Germany since demerger.' The shares, up 3/4p

to 57 3/4p, were 80p when it split from BT in 2001.

Rival Energis launches a fresh assault today on what it claims are BT's anticompetitive pricing policies in broadband. Separately, BT is linking with web giant Yahoo! to attract more people to its broadband service.

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