Ocado poaches Rolls-Royce executive after online grocer's finance chief retired having earned more than £26m and built up shareholding worth £38m

Ocado has poached a Rolls-Royce executive after the online grocer's finance chief retired having earned more than £26m and built up a shareholding worth £38m. 

Duncan Tatton-Brown has stepped down due to 'family circumstances'. And in a further setback for Rolls-Royce as it reels from a record half-year loss of £5.4billion, Tatton-Brown will be replaced by the engineer's finance chief Stephen Daintith.

Expanding: Ocado has grown to 350,000 weekly orders and grew its revenues to over £1billion in the six months to the end of May.

Tatton-Brown, 55, will stay in his job until November and continue as a non-executive director of the joint venture with Marks & Spencer, which launches on Tuesday. 

Daintith will leave aerospace – an industry on its knees – to join the booming online grocery sector. 

Ocado has grown to 350,000 weekly orders and grew its revenues to over £1billion in the six months to the end of May. 

Leaving: Ocado's Duncan Tatton-Brown

Its success has enabled Ocado to pay enormous bonuses to its bosses. Last year Tatton-Brown earnt £15.8m, but even this paled in comparison to the £58.7m paid to chief executive and founder Tim Steiner. 

Ahead of his retirement the former finance chief was also in line for a bonus of up to £25m, but this will now lapse. Steiner's maximum payout under the same scheme is £100m. 

The share price has exploded this year, rising 138 per cent from 1,064p at the end of February to 2537p last night. 

The increase has increased the value of Tatton-Brown's holdings by £22m, and the value of Steiner's shares by £347m to £598m.