Telstra chief Vicki Brady receives $700,000 raise despite nationwide outage

Telstra’s board approved a total remuneration of $6.8 million for chief executive Vicki Brady for the fiscal year ending June, after reducing her bonus by 20%, which equated to a $607,000 cut. Despite the penalty, Brady’s pay rose by $700,000 compared with the $6.1 million she earned the year before. The adjustment follows a July-wide network outage blamed on a missing software update, which affected almost half of all calls and data sessions before being fixed.

Brady told investors that over 30,000 customers had filed for compensation, and the firm had already disbursed close to $1 million, though the total liability is still being assessed. The company also trimmed bonuses for its former global networks group executive and other senior leaders, cutting $1.3 million from their combined pay. Telstra reported profit growth to $2.4 billion, a dividend of 21 cents per share, and a share price dip to $4.875, reducing market value by $1.4 billion.