BBC executive given £800,000 golden goodbye just weeks after new Director General imposes £150,000 cap
A BBC executive is in line for an £800,000 payoff just weeks after the new director general ordered a £150,000 cap on severance payments, it has emerged.
On joining the corporation at the beginning of April, one of Lord Hall’s first decisions was to impose the ceiling on payouts after it was claimed that losing a job with the BBC was like ‘winning the lottery’.
It follows public anger at payouts to executives, including former director general George Entwistle who was awarded a £450,000 lump sum after a disastrous 54 days in the top job.
But it has since emerged that Lord Hall’s policy will not come into force until September, allowing John Smith, the former chief executive of BBC Worldwide, to walk away with a year’s notice of £477,000, profit-related pay of up to £386,000 and a £4million pension pot.
That is despite Mr Smith, who has gone on to become chief operating officer at the fashion house Burberry, telling the BBC that he wanted to resign.
Mr Smith, 55, joined the BBC in 1989 and left on December 31. He saw profits increase by fourfold during his time as the head of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the corporation.
However, he also oversaw the disastrous purchase of the travel guidebook company Lonely Planet, which was bought for £130million in 2007 and sold last month for just £51.1million.
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Last night, Conservative MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons culture select committee, said: ‘There are many who will feel that the level of payout to John Smith is unjustified, and we hope it will be the last. It’s even harder to justify that kind of payment when he was in charge when the BBC made such a disastrous decision over the Lonely Planet deal.’
A BBC spokesman said last night: ‘Tony Hall has been clear that the BBC cannot continue to sanction redundancy and severance pay of the size of those made in the past.’
Conservative MP John Whittingdale (above), chairman of the Commons culture select committee, said there were many people 'who will feel that the level of payout to John Smith is unjustified'