BT chief Gavin Patterson awarded almost £2m in shares

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson has been awarded close to £2m in shares under a long-term incentive plan that paid out this week for about 1,000 employees of the British telecoms group.

In total, BT awarded about 16.7m shares at £4.69 per share, which took the total payout across staff eligible for the scheme to approximately £78m.

Mr Patterson was awarded the largest allocation of shares at 416,719 shares, narrowly ahead of finance director Tony Chanmugam, who received 391,131 shares equating to £1.8m.

BT staff have benefited from the strength of the share price at the group, which is trading at near a 15-year peak given optimism among investors about its future plans to break into the British mobile and TV markets.

The group recently agreed the £12.5bn acquisition of EE, and is looking to launch a further aggressive onslaught on the pay TV market this year bolstered by the additional of Champions League football games.

The performance-based shares relate to a three-year period from 2012. The payout is based on targets around three-year normalised free cash flow, total shareholder returns and revenue.

A BT spokesman said: "More than a thousand BT employees have received performance-based shares after helping to transform the company over the past three years."

The spokesman added: "BT is a much better and stronger company than it was three years ago and this is reflected in the share price. It is generating strong cash flow and delivering higher profits and dividends at the same time as making substantial investments for the future."

The level of share vesting through the scheme was 67.4 per cent, which means that BT did not meet all of its targets in the period. This was a lower payout of shares than last year, when close to 80 per cent of shares vested, but a stronger BT share price means that the cash equivalent is broadly the same.

Since August 2014, more than 22,000 staff also benefited from savings-related share option plan where they could buy shares at 61p. The average gain was about £41,000 for each employee.

The £2m will be part of Mr Patterson's overall pay packet when it is unveiled in BT's annual report in one week's time. Last year, he was paid a total of about £4.3m, including close to £2m in shares under the incentive plan.

Mr Patterson immediately sold some shares to cover tax on shares vesting and has also transferred some shares to his wife.

The incentive plan has paid out at about 46 per cent since it was introduced in 2004. Last year, BT paid 78.7 per cent in the 2011 plan and all of 2010 plan two years ago.

John Petter, the head of BT's consumer business, was awarded 111,854 shares worth about £524,000, with a similar amount given to the heads of its wholesale, global services and technology arms.

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