Centrica pay approved despite ‘fat cat’ branding by protesters

The pay of British Gas owner Centrica was approved at its annual meeting despite an outcry by 20 protest groups.

"Centrica are the fattest of the fat cats. They are about profit not people,” was the verdict of Elaine Lebethe, the chairwoman of the Lambeth Pensioners Action Group, one of the groups outside the meeting at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London yesterday.

More than a few dissenting voices made it into the hall to give the new chairman, Rick Haythornthwaite, and his board a rough ride. It wasn’t just pay packages like director Chris Weston’s £401,000 cash bonus that were under fire.

For instance, Clare Welton of Fuel Poverty Action, who mixed up her beverage and food metaphors, told the board: “When are you going to wake up and smell the coffee? We don’t want a bigger slice of the pie, we want the whole bakery,” a reference to renationalisation, as she castigated the group for installing controversial pre-payment meters in the homes of people who failed to pay their bills.

Fracking – the exploration technology Centrica is keen to enter in the UK – also raised its head in questioning, with both for and against sides present, as did supposed “dithering” over building new nuclear power plants.

One disenchanted shareholder catalogued Centrica’s recent travails – the second profits warnings in six months, poor customer service standards, dividends under threat and the spectre of being the biggest player in an industry which has become a political football – telling Haythornthwaite he had been “recruited into a relative shambles”.

Despite angry shouts from the floor, Haythornthwaite put on a brave face, surprisingly admitting that the company that “balls had been dropped in the past” at the company – which has been recently fined £5.6m for poor customer service. Customer complaints as late as the third quarter of last year were “far too high”, and he was looking for “changes to the fabric of the business”.

As for the profits warnings, these were squarely put down to a mild winter. But it was politics – the threat of a price freeze from an incoming Labour government, a full competition inquiry and worsening fuel poverty – which loomed largest.

The chief executive, Sam Laidlaw, said he had “real concerns that a two-year market investigation will damage investment”, adding that any such investigation would have to be wide-ranging, encompassing green taxes as well as Big Six profits.

As for Labour’s plans for a price freeze, Laidlaw steered largely clear, other than to state that “political consensus has broken down and the energy industry portrayed as part of the problem”, but in a veiled sideswipe at Labour’s policy pledge he did add: “Only solutions grounded in economic reality have a future.”