TELECOMS company Vodafone has defied shareholder pressure and awarded chief executive Sir Christopher Gent a controversial £1.5m bonus.

The group's annual report said Sir Christopher, who received a £2.4m pay package last year, had achieved necessary performance targets for the award to be made.

Sir Christopher was granted the payout, which was originally worth £10m, following the company's takeover of the German firm Mannesmann two years ago.

He has already received half in cash. The second half, made up of 1.6m shares, was originally worth £5m, but as Vodafone's share price has fallen, the value of the bonus has dropped to about £1.5m.

He has agreed to keep the shares for a year before cashing them in.

Vodafone, which reported losses totalling £13.5bn for last year, said the shares were awarded on the achievement of earnings growth targets over the two years to March 31, this year.

But shares in the group have lost two-thirds of their value over the past year. On June 19, last year, shares were at 311p, but yesterday shares were valued at just 92p.

Unions and investors voiced their anger about the payout.

John Monks, general secretary of the TUC, said: "Every example of excess executive pay draws attention to the double standards in Britain's boardrooms.

"Employees, who are being hit by cuts in their pay through changes to their pension schemes, will take a very cynical view of boardroom excess.

The Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS), which owns about 500,000 shares in Vodafone, said bonuses purely for doing deals were one of the "seven deadly sins of corporate governance".

Ian Jones, head of corporate governance at CIS, said: "CIS have identified such bonuses, known as transactional bonuses, as one of the seven areas of concern we have with company behaviour, the seven deadly sins of corporate governance."