The American company behind the flammable cladding on Grenfell Tower paid more compensation to its own shareholders than to the 72 people who lost their lives or the survivors of the disaster, a damning new investigation has revealed.
Arconic, which manufactured and sold the cladding panels identified as the primary cause of how the fire spread so rapidly up the building in June 2017, handed over $74m (around £54.7m) to shareholders who suffered economic losses following the blaze. That figure is roughly £23m more than what victims and bereaved families received.
The findings have been described by the report’s author as evidence of a ‘near-total failure’ to hold corporations properly accountable for one of the worst building disasters in modern British history.
Grenfell Tower in west London caught fire in the early hours of 14 June 2017. The blaze killed 72 people and left hundreds more homeless. Investigations and inquiries in the years since have consistently pointed to the aluminium composite cladding fitted to the outside of the building as the key factor that turned what should have been a contained flat fire into an inferno that engulfed the entire tower within hours.
Arconic was at the centre of that story. The company’s Reynobond PE panels were found to have a polyethylene core that burns intensely, and evidence heard during the Grenfell Inquiry suggested the firm knew about the fire risks associated with the product but continued selling it for use on high-rise buildings anyway.
Despite that, the new investigation lays bare just how little of the financial fallout from the disaster has actually reached the people who suffered most. While shareholders were compensated for the drop in Arconic’s stock value following the fire, victims and their families have had to fight for years through legal processes to get anything close to meaningful recognition or financial support.
For many in the Grenfell community, the findings will come as a painful but unsurprising confirmation of what they have long argued. That big corporations are able to navigate legal and financial systems in ways that protect their investors far more effectively than they protect ordinary people harmed by their products.
Campaigners and legal experts have pointed out that the structure of corporate accountability in the UK and internationally makes it extremely difficult to pursue companies for the human cost of disasters like Grenfell. Shareholders, by contrast, have well-established legal routes to claim compensation when a company’s actions cause its stock to fall.
The report adds to growing pressure on the government to look seriously at how corporate accountability works in the context of building safety and large-scale disasters. The Grenfell Inquiry’s final report, published last year, made wide-ranging recommendations about how the construction industry and regulators need to change. But critics argue that without meaningful consequences for the companies involved, the incentives to cut corners on safety will remain.
Arconic has faced legal action on multiple fronts since the fire. The company has consistently denied wrongdoing, though it has reached settlements in various cases without admitting liability.
For survivors and the bereaved, the compensation gap is not just a financial issue. It goes to the heart of how much their lives are valued compared to the financial interests of a corporation’s investors. Many have spent nearly a decade fighting for justice, living with trauma, and watching as the legal and political processes move slowly while companies protect themselves through expensive lawyers and complex corporate structures.
The ‘near-total failure’ described in the report is not just about Arconic. It reflects a broader pattern where the people most harmed by corporate negligence are often the last to see any meaningful redress, while those with financial stakes and legal resources secure their payouts far more quickly and efficiently.
With criminal investigations still ongoing in relation to Grenfell, and calls continuing for prosecutions of the companies and individuals involved, this latest revelation is likely to intensify demands for real, lasting reform of how Britain holds corporations to account when their decisions cost lives.