Morrisons bosses give up £1m in bonus payments

Potts has waived a £598,000 payment from his £1.6m bonus pot, while Strain is giving up £437,000 of his £1.3m bonus.

Both had personal targets related to the launch of new premium products and opening stores. They made the decision to hand back the bonuses after “taking into consideration the overall performance of the group”.

The duo also turned down a fifth of the main part of their bonuses linked to financial performance, after admitting profits from its wholesale, services and online divisions had not increased as much as hoped.

Despite the move, Potts still took home a £4.6m package last year – the same as Tesco boss Dave Lewis.

Potts was paid his basic salary of £850,000, an annual bonus of just over £1m and £2.5m in long-term share bonuses.

It meant his overall remuneration fell more than £1m year on year. Potts has also turned down a 2% pay rise for Morrisons’ current financial year.

Strain took home a total of £3.24m, down from £3.5m the previous year.

Morrisons suffered a 15.8% drop in statutory pre-tax profit to £320m in the year to February 3, after booking £86m in exceptional costs.

After stripping out those one-off items, including lower profits from property disposals, pre-tax profit rose 8.6% to £406m.

Group like-for-like sales, including its burgeoning wholesale division, grew 4.8% during the year as total revenues climbed 2.7% to £17.7bn.

Last year, Morrisons’ faced a shareholder revolt over executive pay with 15% voting against its remuneration report. However, a large group of investors withheld their votes.