Data: Who are retail’s highest paid bosses of 2025?

Executive pay in retail has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after it emerged that new Burberry boss Joshua Shulman was awarded nearly £2.6m during his first nine months at the helm.

The hefty pay packet was revealed weeks after the luxury fashion brand announced it would be cutting around 1,700 jobs worldwide to reduce costs across the business. Retail Gazette compares the pay of the UK’s top retail CEOs.

Tesco boss Ken Murphy retained his crown as the sector’s highest paid retail boss as he took home a £9.23m pay check.

M&S CEO Stuart Machin wasn’t far behind him, taking home £7.1m for the year. However, the exec is understood to be facing a pay cut of up to £1.1m this year after the retailer’s recent cyber attack wiped more than £1.3bn off its stock value.

JD Sports boss Régis Schultz took home a tidy sum of £2.04m, up 28% on last year. The payout included an increase in his annual bonus from £395,000 to £824,000 – though this was smaller than it could have been had the retailer’s pre-tax profits not fallen for the year.

Additionally, Ocado CEO Tim Steiner’s pay grew 34% to £2.6m last year, despite the business continuing to make heavy losses, with the company reporting a pre-tax loss of £374.5m for the year to 1 December 2024.

Several retailers have hired new CEOs since last year, with Henry Birch joining Halfords in April and Jason Tarry stepping into the hot seat at John Lewis last September. It is understood that Tarry is set receive over £1.3m this year.

Although most CEOs received hefty pay checks, THG CEO Matt Moulding once again took home a very modest pay check of just £32k, albeit rising from his £29k earned the year before. The company noted that Moulding had chosen to waive £726,972 of his salary, while he also opted to waive his entitlement to participate in the business’ annual bonus plan.

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