The Thomas Cook bosses who received £20m in bonuses in last 5 years as company collapsed

Thomas Cook executives have been paid more than £20 million over the last five years, despite long term fears that the operator faced collapse.

Peter Fankhauser, the Swiss chief executive, has taken home £8.3 million since he took the helm in 2014, including a £2.9m bonus in 2015.

Chief financial officers Michael Healy and Bill Scott, who started at the beginning of last, have together been paid around £7 million since 2014.

More than £4 million was paid in this time to the non-executive directors, including Belgian chairman Frank Meysman, who has taken home £1.6m.

While the figures will likely anger staff who now face losing their jobs and the thousands of passengers forced to abandon their holidays, insiders insist that Mr Fankhauser had performed well in very difficult circumstances.

When he took over, the company was in dire financial straits following a string of profit warnings.

But he managed to turn its fortunes around, dragging it back into profitability in 2015. Attempts to modernise and a policy of taking ownership of more hotels in order to capture more of the profit margin appeared to be paying off and for the next three years, Thomas Cook remained in the black.

But the heatwave of 2018, England’s hottest summer on record, hit the company hard, prompting huge swathes of potential customers to holiday at home rather than abroad.

Brexit fears and the fall in the value of the pound have not helped, while it has also struggled to compete with online operators.

Mr Fankhauser faced one of his biggest challenges in 2015 amid intense criticism of how Thomas Cook handled the deaths of two children whilst on holiday in Corfu.

He admitted the firm "failed to show compassion" following calls to boycott the company over its behaviour, which the parents of Bobby and Christi Shepherd, who died in 2006, described as “appalling”.

An inquest jury concluded that the operator had breached its duty of care after the children died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty boiler.

"It is clear that there are things that we as a company could have done better in the past nine years,” Mr Fanhauser said.

“In particular, the way we conducted our relationship with the family and this is something that we are going to change.