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WHS' Kate Swann sees earnings drop

24.11.10 | Victoria Gallagher

W H Smith chief executive Kate Swann saw a dip in her annual earnings of almost £100,000 for the year ended 31st August 2010.

During the last year Swann's overall salary was £1.3m including both her standard salary and annual performance bonus. This was a drop from £1.4m the previous year. Her annual performance bonus stayed the same as the previous year at £787,000. Swann's salary/fees for the year stood at £525,000 and her benefits and other payments were worth £14,000.

In its annual report WHS said its high street sales dropped from £892m in 2009 to £860m. However its profit grew to £51m from £49m the year before. The retailer's travel sales grew for the year to £452m up from £448mm profit also grew from £48m to £53m.

WHS chairman Walker Boyd said the performance, "demonstrates our ability to deliver in a tough trading climate as we continue to grow our travel business, strengthen our core categories in the high atreet and create shareholder value".

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By John W

In my opinion Kate Swann's extremely greedy - she'll still be gorging on close to £8M if you check google.

My son works for WH Smith and LONG before the recession (when we were booming) the following changes occurred : end to final salaried pensions (part of a cost cutting drive which supplied her with a huge bonus for meeting a set traget), sick pay was scrapped for the first 3 days for new employees, scrapped senior sales assistant extra bit of pay, scrapped pay for breaks - even short ones, scrapped pay bonuses, xmas parties are so threadbare due to lack of social funds that they are no longer worth having - normally in a some shed. The only company that charges to park car at a busy airport, constant pressure to reach targets to sell sweets and chocolates on the till with no reward, fiddly tax forms to fill in just for uniforms, contract cleaners scrapped - hence the grotty appearance of the shops, even stopped the minimum wage from going up by merging it with a small location allowance he got - hence it being above the minimum wage rise in Oct. You can't even take a drink of water into outer units even though some shifts are 6hrs long.

All of these cuts while profits get HIGHER and HIGHER in travel retail. Like I said, these changes all came into place long before the recession. Staff that I know are utterly demoralised as they get nothing in return, in fact they get significantly poorer through cuts as the business grows.

Mon, 23/05/2011 - 12:49