BT names Allison Kirkby as first female CEO: will earn up to £5.5m

BT has appointed the first female chief executive in the company’s history and she wil earn as much as £5.5 million a year.

Telecoms giant BT recently revealed plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

Allison Kirkby is set to take over from Philip Jansen, who is due to retire early next year. Her appointment will boost the ranks of female chief executives in the FTSE 100 index, coming soon after the top flight lost a well-respected female boss with the abrupt resignation of Dame Alison Rose at NatWest amid the Nigel Farage account closure row. Kirkby will join the likes of Aviva’s Amanda Blanc, Jennie Daly at Taylor Wimpey and Dame Emma Walmsley of pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline.

Kirkby has been a non-executive director of BT since 2019 and is also president and chief executive of Swedish telecoms firm Telia Company, which has 25 million customers across the Nordic and Baltic region.

BT said Jansen would remain chief executive until the end of January “at the latest” but will be available to support the handover until the end of next March, after which he will retire. The group will make a further announcement to confirm Kirkby’s exact start date.

Kirkby will take on the top role on a £1.1m salary, plus benefits, with a potential annual bonus worth up to £2.2m and a possible further maximum of £2.2m in long-term bonus share awards each year, depending on performance.

Jansen recently announced plans to retire, less than two months after the group revealed plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade, amounting to about 40 per cent of its total workforce. Jansen said at the time that the telecoms firm wanted to advance its use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, with a shift to customers using its app for things such as account servicing and upgrades rather than relying on call centres.

Kirkby said: “I’m incredibly honoured to have been appointed as the next chief executive of BT Group. BT is such an important company for the UK, and our many customers both in the UK and internationally and is uniquely placed to help everyone benefit from the rapid advances in digitalisation.”

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