As Ocado lines up a new boss, scrutiny falls on Tim Steiner's £100m in pay

Ocado is preparing to replace its co-founder and long-serving chief executive, Tim Steiner — and his exit has trained the spotlight on the roughly £100m he is reported to have earned over the years, at a company whose share price has collapsed and which was dropped from the FTSE 100.

Liam Fitzgerald June 28, 2026 at 8:11 AM

The online grocer and technology group Ocado is lining up a successor to Tim Steiner, the co-founder who has led it for more than two decades — and the prospect of his departure has put fresh focus on the roughly £100m in pay and share awards he has accumulated, The Guardian reported.

A boss on the way out

Ocado is searching for a new chief executive, with reports naming Niklas Heuveldop — head of Ericsson-owned Vonage — among the contenders; the company's shares fell on news that Steiner would be replaced, BusinessCloud reported. Steiner has been the public face of Ocado since helping found it in 2000, steering its shift from an online supermarket into a seller of warehouse-robotics technology to grocers around the world.

Reward against a falling share price

The scrutiny stems from the gap between his rewards and the company's recent performance. Ocado's shares have slid steeply from their pandemic-era highs, and in 2024 the company was demoted from the FTSE 100 to the FTSE 250. Steiner's pay has repeatedly drawn opposition: a 2022 "value creation" scheme could have paid out up to £100m had the share price tripled, and a later incentive plan prompted a sizable shareholder revolt, with advisory firms recommending votes against it. The package passed despite the pushback.

The arguments on each side

Ocado's board has defended its approach to executive pay as necessary to reward and retain leadership through a period of transformation, framing Steiner's incentives around long-term value creation in a capital-intensive technology business. Critics — including shareholder advisory groups and pay campaigners — counter that the potential rewards were out of line with market norms and with returns delivered to shareholders, and have pointed to the contrast with pay lower down the company.

A familiar UK debate

The case feeds a long-running argument in Britain over executive pay. Boards increasingly cite global competition for talent and the need to retain leaders, especially those who can command higher rewards abroad; investors and campaigners increasingly press for pay to be justified by company-specific performance rather than blanket appeals to "competitiveness." As Ocado turns the page on its founder-chief executive and seeks a return to sustained profitability, how it structures the next leader's pay — and what it says about the last one's — will be watched closely.