BT pays out £90m bonus package

BT will hand out almost £90m to its leading executives after a scheme to improve its struggling global services division paid off.

The large payments were revealed in The Daily Telegraph, which claimed BT’s CEO, Ian Livingstone, would get a bonus of £5m, while other senior managers at the company would receive £90,000.

The money comes from a scheme set up three years ago to encourage BT employees to improve results after the telecoms company reported an 81% drop in profits.

The results – BT's first fall in revenue for 25 years – came from failures in the global services division, which handles deployments at large corporations and public sector organisations. Despite the recession, the heads of the department continued to make predictions for contracts and profits which the business couldn’t live up to, leaving a substantial hole in BT’s funds and pension scheme.

Livingstone admitted the division was at fault and made thousands of staff redundant in an effort to plug the gap in the company's finances.

Now the incentive scheme is being shared out and staff in the lower ranks are also set to reap the rewards.

According to figures from BT, workers who invested £100 into shares of the company three years ago could receive £8,500 return in the next few months. Up to 20,000 staff got involved, according to BT.

Another scheme encouraged 30,000 employees to invest for a five-year period which, with another payment due in 2014.

Further good news for global services came last week when it received the backing of analyst firm Gartner, which praised BT's “competitive pricing”, “above-average service” and “strong vision”. 

BT will announce its official results for the first quarter of 2012 on Thursday.