Jim Armitage: TalkTalk chopping a chunk off Dido Harding’s bonus was common sense

It’s not often that company’s pay committees get praised, but TalkTalk’s deserves some credit today.

Despite the damage reaped by the cyber attack on the company, chief executive Dido Harding would have been within her rights to claim a £341,000 bonus under the performance criteria in her contract.

Although she missed her headline profit and cashflow goals, she exceeded targets on other measures like average revenue per user and TV numbers. However, the rem committee, led by former Tesco grandee John Gildersleeve, used its discretion arbitrarily to dock £121,000 off the figure.

You could argue that £121k is peanuts from total payola of nearly £3 million, but the vast majority of that package was for a bonus scheme vesting last May and based on the financial performance from the years prior to the hack attack.

I’d have liked to have seen the remuneration committee dock some of that figure too — the profits during those years were partly illusory as they came from a period in which TalkTalk was arguably scrimping on its IT security. But stripping a chunk off this year’s bonus is a good start, and giving what remained of it to charity adds to the common sense.

Bob Dudley’s £14 million pay at BP looks all the more shameful.