IBM boss pockets $4.5m bonus despite company job cuts and financial struggles

IBM's chief executive Virginia Rometty is to receive a $4.5m (£3.1m) bonus for 2015 on top of her $1.6m (£1.1m) salary, despite the company facing financial woes and having to lay off staff.

The company has seen a continued drop in revenue for almost four years, hitting a five-year low stock price last week and reportedly carrying out job cuts and employee "rebalancing" throughout 2015. This news of Rometty's biggest bonus since she joined the company in 2012 will therefore not come as great timing to the IBM workforce facing an uncertain future.

In January 2015 IBTimes reported the company was set to lay off more than 111,000 jobs in an operation known as Project Chrome. This would have been the largest corporate cut in jobs ever but, while the number of jobs was denied, IBM did proceed with a number of cuts and corporate restructuring in 2015.

While the company has been struggling in the hardware and software space Rometty has focused on cloud-based services as well as analytics and security businesses with Bloomberg reporting net cash from operating activities increased 4.4% to $16.9bn, while free cash flow was $13.1bn, a 5.7% jump from 2014. As a result, Rometty took home 90% of her 2015 performance and also received 1.5 million options in IBM stock, which is believed to be the first award of its kind at the company.

This is a staggering bonus for a company that isn't in a position to be freely dishing out cash but back in 2013 Rometty did decide to give up her yearly bonus in light of the company's financial struggles, so it's not all bad.