UK — Tim Steiner, chief executive officer of Ocado, has received £94 million in total payouts from the company, according to an analysis by the High Pay Centre. This includes a nearly £59 million payout in 2019. Ocado shares have fallen more than 90% in the past five years.

Ocado shares traded as low as 172.2p in a recent session. The company's stock market flotation price in 2010 was 180p. Ocado shares reached almost £28 during the Covid pandemic.

Paddy Goffey, head of research at the High Pay Centre, addressed the issue in a recent statement. "Tim Steiner's pay trajectory illustrates a broader problem in the UK's broken executive pay framework: compensation is increasingly shaped by sporadic, outsized awards, rather than being linked to genuine performance," Goffey said. He added, "The £59m figure in 2019 reveals how incentive structures can create extreme spikes in pay that are hard to reconcile with company performance or improvements in the working conditions and pay of employees."

Kroger, a client of Ocado, announced in November that it was closing three warehouses that use Ocado's equipment. Two months later, Ocado revealed that its Canadian partner, Sobeys, was closing its Calgary facility. Steiner said in a statement regarding the events, "The market for large automated distribution centres in the US is smaller than we thought it would be."

Steiner co-founded Ocado in 2000 and led its stock market flotation in 2010. Jörn Rausing, a member of Ocado's board, increased his stake in the company by purchasing an additional £5.4 million in shares in March. At its 2010 flotation, Ocado was valued at £720 million; its current valuation is approximately £1.4 billion.