SIR CHRISTOPHER GENT became one of Britain’s best paid retirees last December, when he walked away from Vodafone with a £15.5 million pension pot and a £100,000 Bentley Arnage.

Sir Christopher, the mobile phone group’s former chief executive, will draw an annual pension of £701,900, starting this year, after Vodafone raised the cost of funding his pension by 49 per cent to £15.5 million last year.

The pension will come on top of the £500,000 a year Sir Christopher will receive when he takes over the chairmanship of GlaxoSmithKline, the drugs group, later this year.

Vodafone was forced to add £5.1 million to Sir Christopher’s pension pot in order to ensure that his annual benefits were not reduced following his decision to take early retirement at the age of 55.

Arun Sarin, who took over as Vodafone’s chief executive last July, received a £3.2 million salary package last year. That remuneration was awarded for eight months as chief executive.

The package included £835,000 in relocation costs to cover Mr Sarin’s move from the US to the UK, bonuses worth worth £1.217 million and a base salary of £1.1 million.

The former chief operating officer of AirTouch was also given shares worth £2.375 million, £330,000 towards his pension, and 7.4 million share options, exercisable from July 2006 at 119¼p. Yesterday, Vodafone’s shares closed at 128¼p, down ¼p.

According to the company’s annual report, released yesterday, Sir Christopher received a pay packet of £865,000, or £49,428 a week, for the four months to July 31, when he stepped down from the top job. The packet consisted of £429,000 in bonuses, on top of a £425,000 base salary and £11,000 in benefits.

He was then given consultancy fees of £541,000 and benefits worth £130,000, which included the Bentley, a company car, for the five months until his official retirement from Vodafone on December 31.

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