UK’s biggest grocer Tesco has suffered a major shareholder revolt over executive pay, despite posting impressive first quarter results earlier today. 

Shareholders representing just over 67% of the grocer’s stock voted against the board’s remuneration report at Tesco’s annual meeting. It comes after outgoing chief executive Dave Lewis’ pay rose by more than a third to over £6.4m last year.

Following the vote, Tesco said it had no plans to make any immediate changes to the executive pay plan. “Following recent engagement on our remuneration report with a number of our larger shareholders, we have been reassured that the majority agree that the overall outcome of the 2017 [long-term bonus] award is proportionate given the outstanding turnaround delivered by management.”

However, it did recognise “that a significant number of shareholders had concerns” with the decision to remove Ocado from the rivals list and would publish an update on its plans for the year ahead within six months.

‘Above and beyond’

The vote threatens to cast a pall over what were an impressive set of first quarter numbers posted by the grocer earlier this morning.

For the 13 weeks to May 30, Tesco reported an 8% increase in UK and Republic of Ireland like-for-like sales to £12.2bn.

Sales in the UK were up 9% in total, driven by a 49% leap in online sales during the period and up 90% at peak in May.

Lewis said the period had been “very challenging for everyone” but said Tesco staff had “gone above and beyond, and I’m extremely proud of what they’ve achieved”.

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