Burberry pays new boss almost £2.6m in his first nine months while cutting workforce

The Guardian

a day ago

Burberry has paid its new boss Joshua Schulman almost £2.6m in his first nine months in the job, including £380,000 in house moving costs, as the ailing British brand announced hundreds of job cuts.
The company also handed former boss Jonathan Akeroyd a pay-off worth about £1.5m – a year's notice including salary, pension and cash benefits – after he exited the company in July last year, according to the group's annual report. The former Versace boss exited less than three years after he was appointed in 2021.
This year Schulman could earn up to £5.6m if he meets bonus targets, excluding a £3.6m potential bonus if he doubles Burberry's share price with the aim of re-entering the FTSE 100.
He is also in line for a further £25,000 a month in 'housing allowance' for just over a year on top of £135,171 to help him find a new home, £120,655 towards transporting his effects from New York, where he previously lived, and five months of housing allowance already paid.
In his first nine months, Schulman was handed a £1.2m bonus on top of his £1.356m in fixed salary which included the moving allowances.
The chunky payments to senior directors come despite Burberry announcing plans to slash 1,700 jobs worldwide by 2027 – including removing the entire night shift of 170 people at its Yorkshire raincoat factory – in a bid to tackle sliding profits.
The company announced the plan earlier this month as it revealed it had dived to an annual loss of £66m, from a profit of £383m a year before, as it struggled in a troubled global luxury goods industry after a series of strategic missteps.
Schulman, the former boss of the US fashion brand Coach, was hired as chief executive last year in an attempt to turn around Burberry's fortunes. The group's share price has risen almost 50% since he was appointed despite fears about the effect of Donald Trump's plans for import tariffs and the effect on both US and Chinese consumer spending.
Earlier this month Schulman announced a plan to cut about a fifth of Burberry's global workforce to bring £60m in additional cost savings on top of a £40m savings programme that he had unveiled in November.
The annual report shows Burberry has already been reducing its workforce with the number of employees down by more than 870 to 8,459 year-on-year.
Burberry's directors said in the report that they had consulted with shareholders about the level of Schulman's pay.
'The majority of shareholders appreciated the circumstances of Josh's recruitment and were supportive of the design of Josh's ongoing remuneration arrangements, the approach to his annual bonus for [the last year] and his recruitment award.'
They said directors were 'mindful of the feedback received from some of our shareholders during the consultation and took this into account when determining the final level of bonus payout'.