TalkTalk chief Dido Harding paid €3.6m in year of cyber attack

The chief executive of UK telecoms company TalkTalk received £2.8m (€3.6m) in pay and share bonuses for the last 12 months, despite the company suffering a cyber attack in October that put the data of thousands of customers at risk.

Dido Harding, who received £550,000 in base pay, said she would donate her £220,000 annual cash bonus to charity following the hack on its business.

“Throughout the cyber attack, we worked hard to put our customers first, and we know that they have appreciated our efforts and our honesty throughout,” Ms. Harding - who has been CEO since 2010 — said yesterday.

“Nevertheless, last October was a challenging period for TalkTalk and its customers and, in recognition of that, I have made a personal decision to donate my bonus to our charity partner, Ambitious About Autism.”

Nearly £2m of Ms Harding’s payout was awarded as shares and re-related to performance targets between 2012-2015, the broadband company said in its annual report, the £220,000 was paid as a bonus for the 12 months to the end of March.

TalkTalk said the annual bonus had been cut from 62% of base pay to 40% to reflect the cyber attack, which cost the firm as much as £80m, including one-off charges of £42m.

Some 157,000 customers were affected by the security breach, far fewer than the numbers initially feared, but the publicity caused a spike in defections, with about 100,000 customers leaving in the final quarter.