Pay at HSBC and Santander, Net Worth, Duplicate Dividends and Persimmon

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Apparently bankers still live in an unreal world so far as most of us are concerned, even after the financial crisis of ten years ago when their remuneration was attacked. The Financial Times covered two stories on the pay of bankers in today’s edition (16/7/2019). The first was on the opposition to pay at Standard Chartered and comments from the CEO, Bill Winters, on it after a vote of almost 40% against their pay policy in May. The concern is mainly about his pension arrangements which will mean he gets a pension allowance of £474,000 this year which is about 20% of his overall pay. But that includes bonuses when usually pensions are related to base salary only.

Mr Winters comments on his pay were quoted as “I think it’s quite appropriate for the board not to ask me to take a pay cut. And they didn’t – I don’t think it ever occurred to them to ask”. Is that not most amusing? Perhaps the FT coverage might remind them to consider the matter.

The other article was on the pay offered by Santander to Andrea Orcel as an incentive to join the company as CEO. It included a €52 million figure as a “joining bonus” including partly cash and partly in shares to offset the loss of deferred pay from him leaving UBS. In fact the offer was subsequently withdrawn and Mr Orcel is now suing but it just shows how bankers’ pay is still in fantasy land.

As it’s a quiet time of year I thought I would take a look at my and my wife’s “net worth” (we jointly manage our financial affairs). Over 20 years ago one of my US business associates talked to me about his net worth which was something new to me and ever since then I have reviewed it occasionally. It’s something everyone should do to tell whether you are getting richer or poorer, separately from your stock market speculations. How do you work it out? You simply list and add up all your assets and debts – like this:

Assets:

Cash in your bank accounts

Value of your investment accounts

Your cars – market value

Market value of your home

Value of Business interests

Personal property, such as jewelry, art, and furniture

Cash value of any insurance policies and pensions

Liabilities (outstanding balances):

House Mortgages

Car loans and other loans secured against assets (e.g. H/P agreements).

Credit card balances

Student loans

Any other debts

The Net Worth is simply the Assets less liabilities. If it is growing from year to year you must be doing something right. If you are getting poorer every year, then you need to do some hard thinking. It gives you a “reality check” on your overall financial position. However there are clearly periods in your life when you are likely to be building up wealth (such as the CEOs of banks mentioned above) but in later life you might be consuming it or giving it away. At least that’s the conventional assumption.

How did we do in the last year? Net worth was up 7% which rather surprised me as UK stock markets have been down over the last year in capital terms and our house (in London outer suburbs) was not revalued as the market is static. We must donate some more to charity.

Dividends do help of course, particularly when a company pays them out twice! This morning I received duplicate cheques from Pets at Home (PETS). I contacted the company and have spoken to their registrar. They will let me know whether to present the cheques or not. I suspect they may want to cancel all the dividend cheques they have issued. This is the first time this has happened to me, and it simply looks like the same cheques have been printed twice. I suggest other holders of shares in this company await advice, not that many people receive their dividends in cheque form these days.

Persimmon (PSN) shares were down slightly today which is not surprising after the documentary about the defects in their newly built houses on a Channel 4 Despatches programme last night. It highlighted the poor quality of the houses while Persimmon was raking in money from the Government “Help to Buy” scheme which encourages house buying and has probably contributed to rising house prices. Persimmon has been making a profit of £66,000 on each home sold on average, and it was suggested that they paid more attention to the profits of the company than to their customers. Such profits also enabled enormous bonuses to be paid to their management.

I used to hold Persimmon shares but no longer. I have been concerned for some time about the future of the Help-to-Buy scheme and the general unaffordability of houses which may get a lot worse if interest rates rise. House builders are certainly looking cheap on fundamentals at present but can the bonanza continue much longer is the question investors need to ask themselves. A few more programmes like that on Channel 4 and the Government may decide there are better ways to help those without houses.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

Post Date: July 17, 2019
One comment
  1. Mohammed Amin says:
    17th July 2019 at 9:35 pm

    I agree that it makes sense to look at your net worth once a year. I have been doing this since I retired 9 years ago. Before that, it was not relevant, since when working and saving, your net worth normally rises every year anyway.

    Doing so helps you to be more disciplined about your spending and giving decisions throughout the year.

    Reply

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