How Centrica boss Chris O'Shea earned £4.5million in a year

The British Gas fatcat who took home a £4.5million pay packet – but still shops at TK Maxx: Married father-of-three loves Primal Scream and Celtic FC – and ‘takes a bare-knuckle approach to diplomacy’

• Chris O’Shea is a married father-of-three who lives in a village near Reading
• Centrica boss, 49, earned £790,000 in pay in 2022 plus £3.7m in bonuses 

The boss of British Gas owner Centrica is a Primal Scream fan with an extravagant beard and moustache who took home £4.5million in pay and bonuses last year.

Chris O’Shea, 49, who lives in a village near Reading, earned £790,000 in pay in 2022 plus an annual bonus of £1.4million and a £2.3million long-term share bonus.

The married father-of-three has previously admitted his job as chief of Britain’s biggest energy supplier is the ‘lightning rod role’ in terms of the criticism it attracts.

Mr O’Shea, who joined Centrica as chief financial officer in 2018 and was appointed chief executive two years later – has also been outspoken about ethical principles.

He wore a hoodie for an interview with The Times last year featuring the slogan: ‘Why be racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic when you could just be quiet?’

Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea on the Rough gas platform in the North Sea on June 29

Chris O’Shea at the Scottish Gas Academy in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, on July 7

Mr O’Shea has been credited with turning around Centrica after it fell out of the FTSE 100, shares fell 90 per cent below their 2013 peak and profits slid to a record low.

Married father-of-three who earned £4.49m in a year and loves Primal Scream and Celtic FC

Centrica chief executive Christopher Michael O’Shea was born in October 1973 and trained as an accountant.

He studied accounting and finance at the University of Glasgow before completing a master’s at Duke University in North Carolina.

The 49-year-old worked for firms including Shell, Ernst & Young, BG Group and Smiths Group – living and working in the UK, US and Nigeria – before joining Centrica as chief financial officer in 2018.

He later began chief executive in 2020 and refused bonuses for his first three years, before being given a £4.49million pay package in March, which included £790,000 in pay plus an annual bonus of £1.4million and a £2.3million long-term share bonus.

Mr O’Shea is married with two daughters in their 20s and a son in his late teens. He lives in a village near Reading and owns a house in Glasgow, where he eventually plans to retire.

In previous interviews he revealed his favourite album is Screamadelica by Primal Scream; his favourite book is Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh; and his favourite film is the 2019 Muhammad Ali documentary What’s My Name.

His hobbies include football and running – he is a Celtic FC fan and has previously run the London Marathon.

When the Scotsman took over as chief executive at the start of the pandemic, he cut 5,000 jobs and began a ‘fire and rehire’ drive with British Gas boiler engineers which caused so much anger that someone sent, in his words, a ‘package of s*** to the house’.

But the transformation now appears to be gathering pace, after Centrica today revealed earnings at its retail supplier business soared by nearly 900 per cent.

The energy giant said this morning that underlying earnings at its gas and electricity supply arm leaped 889 per cent to £969 million in the six months to June 30 from £98million a year earlier.

The Windsor-based firm said the result was buoyed as Ofgem’s price cap in the first half of the year – when customers saw their bills limited to £2,500 a year under the Energy Price Guarantee – allowed it to recoup losses seen a year earlier – to the tune of about £500million.

But Mr O’Shea – whose company has ten million customers, 20,000 staff and 500,000 shareholders – does not have the appearance of a typical ‘fat cat’.

He drives around in a 1992 ex-Army Land Rover Defender and claimed to The Times in April last year that he prefers to buy clothes ‘in the clearance rail at TK Maxx’ and charity shops – choosing jeans, Converse All-Stars trainers and a hoodie instead of wearing a suit.

Mr O’Shea took no bonuses for the first two years of his tenure as chief executive of Centura, which made him one of the lowest-paid bosses in the FTSE 100 – although he still enjoyed annual rewards of £765,000 and £875,000.

Last year he said he was waiving his bonus for 2021 while his customers were struggling to pay their energy bills.

But despite his bumper pay packet in 2022, he insisted that he is not motivated by money, saying: ‘I’m not coin-operated.’

Speaking about his salary in an interview with the Daily Mail one month ago, he said: ‘There is always a focus on pay for chief executives of listed companies. There is far less focus on the value leaking out of companies that are not listed.’

He has also apologised profusely after it emerged agents working for British Gas had forced their way into homes of the poor and vulnerable to fit expensive pre-payment meters.

Chris O’Shea with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) and then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak (right) during a visit to a British Gas training academy in Leicester on September 13, 2021

Chris O’Shea with then-Prime Minister Liz Truss at the British Gas training academy near Dartford in Kent to coincide with support being given for energy bills  on September 30, 2022

Mr O’Shea told the Daily Mail in the same interview that an investigation ‘highlighted no systemic issues, but a number of points where we have fallen short’.

Who is on Centrica’s leadership team? 

These nine people are listed by Centrica’s website as being on the board of directors.

Their salaries are given from the firm’s 2022 remuneration report.  Some are significantly lower than others because the director joined during the course of the year.

• Chris O’Shea, group chief executive – £4.49million (joined in 2018)
• Scott Wheway, chairman – £410,000 (joined in May 2016)
• Kevin O’Byrne, senior independent director – £109,000 (joined in May 2019)
• Carol Arrowsmith, non-executive director – £93,000 (joined in June 2020)
• Heidi Mottram, non-executive director – £93,000 (joined in January 2020)
• Amber Rudd, non-executive director – £71,000 (joined on January 10, 2022)
• Nathan Bostock, non-executive director – £47,000 (joined on May 9, 2022)
• Chanderpreet (CP) Duggal, non-executive director – £3,000 (joined on December 16, 2022)
• Russell O’Brien, non-executive director – no figure (joined on March 1, 2023)

‘We have brought all the debt collection in-house. We haven’t yet reinstated prepayments, other than in cases of criminality, such as cannabis farms. We have found a lot of those,’ he added.

He was born Christopher Michael O’Shea in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on October 23, 1973 and was brought up on a council estate in Glenrothes before his family moved to Glasgow when he was nine.

He has previously told how his mother used to tell him as a child: ‘If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’

Mr O’Shea went from his comprehensive school to study accounting and finance at the University of Glasgow after Oxford rejected him for law following a ‘car crash’ interview.

He then completed a master’s at Duke University in North Carolina and started off as a trainee chartered accountant with Stevenson & Kyles in Glasgow in 1993, before joining Ernst & Young as a corporate tax adviser in 1996.

Further roles in tax, audit and finance followed at Shell from 1998, before he joined BG Group eight years later. 

He also worked for Vesuvius and Smiths Group – and has spent time working in both the US and Nigeria.

Then in 2018 he joined Centrica as chief financial officer – before being appointed chief executive just two years later when his predecessor Iain Conn stepped down.

Mr O’Shea has been described by industry sources as having a combative approach with ‘bare-knuckle diplomacy’.

But he told The Times last year of facing criticism: ‘I don’t tend to take things personally. If you do this job and you feel sorry for yourself, you’re in the wrong job.’

He has introduced various policies to boost inclusivity and morale at Centrica, including guidelines on transitioning at work, fertility support and more help for staff affected by domestic abuse.

Mr O’Shea is married with two daughters in their 20s and a son in his late teens. While he currently lives near Reading, he also owns a house in Glasgow and plans to eventually retire there.

Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea on the Rough gas platform in the North Sea on June 29

Mr O’Shea was born in 1973 and brought up on a council estate in Glenrothes, Fife

In previous interviews he revealed his favourite album is Screamadelica by Primal Scream and his top TV show is Curb Your Enthusiasm.

He has also said his favourite book is Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh; and his favourite film is the 2019 Muhammad Ali documentary What’s My Name.

READ MORE Fury at British Gas as profit surges by nearly 900% to a ‘sickening’ record of £969million while normal families struggle to pay their soaring bills – just months after fatcat boss took home £3.7m bonus

His hobbies include football and running – he is a Celtic FC fan and has previously run the London Marathon.

In February 2022, Mr O’Shea told the Daily Mail that he was still working from home one or two days a week and would not be returning to the office full time. His current working situation is unknown.

‘I’m of the firm belief that people pay attention to what you do more than what you say,’ he said at the time. ‘I’ve committed to [a flexible policy] and I like to keep my word so I will not go back five days a week to the office.’

Speaking today, Mr O’Shea said Centrica’s solid balance sheet had helped to protect consumers after several energy suppliers collapsed over the past few years, caught out by fixed price supply contracts when wholesale prices rocketed.

‘To be sustainable and stable you have got to make a profit,’ he said during a briefing. He also insisted the profit level was not the new normal for British Gas.

In the future he expects British Gas Energy, Centrica’s energy supply division, to make a little under a quarter of a billion pounds a year in overall adjusted operating profit.

‘We expect that going forward British Gas Energy will make on a normalised basis around £150million to £250 million a year, a vast majority of that tends to be in the first half,’ Mr O’Shea told reporters on phone call this morning. ‘We would not expect to see profits anywhere near this level from British Gas Energy, it really is a one-off.’

He added: ‘I don’t see (£1 billion) as being reflective of the performance. You have to really strip it (the £500 million) out. It’s important that people understand that it’s simply a recovery of costs that we incurred in the past.’

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