Oil giant Shell paid its chief executive Ben van Beurden €24.2m last year, of which €18m went towards topping up his pension scheme.

Details of the payments are included in the Anglo-Dutch company’s annual report which was published on Thursday. In addition to a fixed salary of €1.4m and performance-related pay of €4.16m, the rest came in the form of a €10.7m pension payment and €7.9m to offset the impact of British taxes on that payment.

Van Beurden was an internal candidate when he took over the helm at Shell in January 2014.

A spokesman for the company told the Financieele Dagblad the pension and tax payments are one-offs.

‘The pension contribution was made because he was appointed CEO and this merits a larger pension,’ the spokesman said. ‘The tax contribution is compensation for the extra tax he is liable for because he had to move from Britain to the Netherlands.’

According to the Guardian, Van Beurden’s remuneration makes him the second-highest paid boss in the FTSE 100 index of leading companies on the London Stock Exchange.