Simon Thompson (Royal Mail)

Simon Thompson (born August 1966) is a British business executive, who has been the chief executive (CEO) of Royal Mail since January 2021.

Thompson's appointment as CEO was announced on 11 January 2021. Thompson will receive a salary of £500,000, plus a pension of 13.6% of base pay (about £71,400 a year) and bonuses yet to be determined.

Thompson, a non-executive director of Royal Mail since November 2017, was managing director of the NHS test and trace programme and has been chief product officer at Ocado. He has also worked at Apple, HSBC, lastminute.com, Morrisons and Honda Europe.

In May 2023, it was announced that Thompson would step down as head of Royal Mail. In the statement announcing his departure, Mr Thompson said he had been "incredibly proud to lead Royal Mail during this crucial period". The Communication Workers Union had previously called for Thompson to step down.

Criticism

In 2023, as Royal Mail’s CEO, Thompson appeared twice before the UK parliament’s business, energy and industrial strategy select committee (BEIS). The first BEIS cross-party committee in January 2023, chaired by MP Darren Jones, heard testimony from Thompson and also from Dave Ward, the General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union on issues related to Royal Mail workers’ industrial action.

Thompson appeared before the BEIS committee for a second time because he was recalled by MPs who felt he had not given “wholly correct” answers at his first appearance. Thompson’s second appearance was also noteworthy due to the fact that Darren Jones had deemed it necessary that Thompson, Royal Mail’s chair Keith Williams, and operations development director Ricky McAuley all swear an oath to tell the truth before the committee under a warning of contempt of parliament and a “potential perjury.”

Summing up the session, Jones was quoted in The Guardian as suggesting a common theme among answers given to the committee by Thompson and his two associates: “We have rogue posters, rogue managers, we have isolated incidents, we have a global pandemic, we have industrial action,” he said. “It is everyone else’s fault, nothing to do with me, guv [sic]."

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