The owner of JD Sports has been hit by a shareholder revolt over executive pay after it emerged boss Peter Cowgill was paid almost £6m in bonuses since February last year, despite the company accepting more than £100m in government support.

The revolt is the latest bloody nose for a big company over pay this year as often passive institutional investors have stepped forward to raise concerns about high remuneration for executives, while many ordinary workers have lost jobs or taken a pay cut from reduced hours or being put on furlough.

This year, Foxtons, Cineworld and Morrisons have all seen shareholder protests over pay schemes for top bosses running into millions of pounds.

Andrew Leslie, chair of the remuneration committee which oversees executive pay at JD Sports, was forced to step down on Thursday after 11 years on the board, when he failed to gain enough votes from independent shareholders for re-election at the company’s annual meeting on Thursday.

The board of JD Group, which owns Blacks Leisure, Millets and Size? as well as the JD Sports chain, had yet to release the full voting tally by Thursday evening, hours after its annual meeting. However, the company acknowledged “the lower levels of support” for its remuneration report, which set out what executives were to be paid for 2020.

In a statement, it said a new remuneration policy which will determine future pay, bonuses and share awards received more than 80% of votes placed. The majority vote was secured thanks in part to support from sportswear specialist Pentland Group, which owns more than half the group’s shares.

However, as controlling shareholder Pentland was excluded from the independent shareholder vote which saw Leslie loose his board role.

Janet Williamson, a senior policy officer at the TUC, called on the government to look at measures to reform corporate governance to ensure the interests of all stakeholders, including workers, were taken into account by companies.

“Public money designed to support businesses during the pandemic should not be lining the pockets of company directors or shareholders – it should be supporting jobs and paying decent wages to staff,” she said.

Russ Mould, investment director at financial broker AJ Bell, said: “The fact [JD] still hasn’t repaid furlough support from the government despite guiding for at least £550m in profit this year is disgraceful. It’s even more of an insult that it is still biding its time to make a firm decision or not whether to give back the money.

“This is an incredibly successful business which is making significant amounts of money. The furlough scheme was put in place to support companies during dark times, but JD Sports is one of many businesses which have thrived with online sales during the pandemic.”

The row with independent investors comes as JD said it had yet to decide whether to hand back furlough cash paid out by the government to support jobs despite raising its profit outlook to £550m for the year.

The company accepted £86m in furlough payments for staff and an estimated £38m in business rates relief last year. JD would not confirm if it topped up the pay of workers on furlough – staff only receive 80% of their normal salary via the government’s job protection scheme.

The company said trading had been particularly encouraging in the UK since lockdown restrictions were lifted, and most of its 3,300 stores worldwide are now open.

Cowgill took a 75% cut to his basic pay for several months during the pandemic taking his annual salary to £700,000 and his annual bonus for the year to 30 January was reduced from £1.7m to £1.3m.

However, he also took home £3m from a special bonus approved in 2019, half of which was paid before the pandemic and half in February 2020.

A further £1.5m from that special bonus scheme, which had originally been due for payment in October 2020, was paid in January this year. It is understood a further £1.5m was paid a month later, in February this year.

Cowgill recently defended the payout saying he had only received one long-term incentive plan (LTIP) in eight years.

The reopening of stores and resilient online sales allowed the company to raise its pre-tax profit expectations for the year to “no less than” £550m, up sharply from £324m in the previous year. Shares rose almost 4%, making JD Sports one of the top risers on the FTSE 100 on Thursday morning.

The retailer set out the better-than-expected outlook before its annual shareholder meeting.

The company said it accepted the government’s financial support and used it “for the purposes intended” to ensure “the thousands of people that we employ continue to be supported and have sustainable and long-term employment prospects with our business”.

JD Sports said it would make a decision on repaying the government’s furlough cash when there is “certainty on both the full easing of restrictions and the consequences of any further lockdowns during our peak trading period this winter”.

It said the uncertainty surrounding Covid “has not yet fully passed and the current resurgence in infection rates is affecting our core customer demographic more than was the case previously”.

JD Sports said it also plans to split Cowgill’s role of executive chairman and chief executive before the next annual general meeting and will start a “comprehensive process” shortly.