Lalani, who was appointed FD of the telecoms giant on 7 February, 2005, received a total pay packet of £1.068m in 2006/2007, compared with £759,000 for BT’s previous financial year.

The CIMA-affiliated finance boss enjoyed a salary hike higher than any of his other contemporaries on the board including chief executive Ben Verwaayen.

Five of BT’s board now have membership of the millionaire’s club as opposed to two in 2005/2006. Lalani is only beaten on salary by Verwaayen and Ian Livingstone, BT’s head of retail.

The FD’s windfall was also boosted by a £135,000 pension provision payment. Lalani is a member of the BT Pension Scheme but opted out of future pensionable service accrual, BT said. In respect of his decision, the FTSE 100 giant said it had ‘agreed to pay an annual amount equal to 30% of his salary towards the pension provision.’

His pay is set to increase even further after BT’s most recent annual salary review. The company has approved Lalani’s basic pay packet being boosted by an extra £60,000 from that date: ‘Hanif Lalani’s salary will be increased from £460,000 to £520,000,’ said BT in its annual report. ‘All increases will be effective from 1 June 2007.’

NEWS IN BRIEF

Vodafone announces £3.5bn impairment hit

Vodafone has disclosed a £3.5bn impairment charge in reporting its final results. The write-down means that the mobile phone giant has suffered a total hit of £11.6bn after problems in Germany and Italy during the first half of the year resulted in an impairment of £8.1bn. Vodafone stated that the write-down was caused by a ‘pricing intervention’ on top-up fees in Italy.

WPP’s FD picks up £1.6m

WPP’s FD Paul Richardson received a pay packet of more than £1.6m. The advertising giant published its annual report earlier this week, which showed that Richardson had received a modest increase during 2006 as his pay rose from £1.49m in the previous financial year. Richardson’s salary was paid part in US dollars and part in sterling. The annual report also disclosed that the FTSE 100 giant had engaged the rest of the Big Four as advisers in addition to its auditors Deloitte. Richardson became FD in 1996 after four years as director of treasury. Before taking up his current post, Richardson spent six years with the central financial team of Hanson.

Correction ­ HMRC

On 24 May we published a piece entitled ‘PAYE Chaos sees deadline extended,’ in which we reported that HM Revenue & Customs has extended the filing deadline for PAYE returns following a series of glitches to the IT system for filing the returns. We are happy to point out that the deadline had not, in fact, been extended and that the extension to the deadline has been in existence as normal procedure for ten years. We apologise to HMRC for the error and for any confusion that may have been caused.