Remuneration

FRC Fines Grant Thornton £650k, Ted Baker and Tullow

A ShareSoc member emailed us to give his view: This is terrible. Why wouldn’t the FRC name the partner and the company involved, especially when Grant Thornton has been...

One in 10 investment trust board directors have no ‘skin in the game’

By Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director The new remuneration guidelines from the Investment Association have this to say about Share Ownership: Non-Executive Shareholding Shareholders encourage non-executive directors to own shares...

Mello Event, ProVen and ShareSoc Seminars and Lots More News

It’s been a busy last two days for me with several events attended. The first was on Tuesday when I attended the Mello London event in Chiswick. It was...

Deferred Shares Report and Voting Trends Survey

Study shows low adoption of deferred share plans Tom Gosling, Partner, PwC | Executive Fellow, London Business School | Steering Committee Member, Purposeful Company Taskforce has written a good...

3i – Well Managed and Well Incentivised

The 8 times increase in the 3i share price in the past 10 years means that 3i is one of the largest holdings in my portfolio. So I thought...

D4T4 Solutions AGM

This morning (22nd August) I attended the Annual General Meeting of D4T4 Solutions Plc (D4T4) at their offices in Sunbury-on-Thames. This is an AIM-listed niche software solutions business which...

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

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 ...

GoGompare AGM and a Generous Remuneration Scheme

Yesterday (23rd May) I attended the Annual General Meeting of GoCompare.com Group (GOCO) which was actually renamed GoCo Group at the meeting. This was held in the City of London at 3.00 pm but even so there were still very few ordinary shareholders present – less than ten I would guess. The company’s main business is a price comparison web service, particularly focused on car insurance, but also covering utilities and other products. It is of course fronted by Italian opera singer ...

(BEIS) Parliament Committee Report on executive pay is highly critical of companies and fund managers

By Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director My comments on this report of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Parliamentary Committee, published 26 March 2019, are: This report very much endorses ShareSoc’s view that pay in FTSE 100 companies is too high, and probably most companies could recruit good executives for half the current rates of remuneration. We published our views in 2016 see ShareSoc’s remuneration guidelines see https://www.sharesoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ShareSoc-Remuneration-Guidelines-Large-companies-2016.06.07-.pdf . We were ahead of the curve and it is good to see others ...

Lloyds Bank – Recommendation to vote against the Remuneration Report

I recommend shareholders vote against the Remuneration Report at the Lloyds AGM on 16 May 2019, because the proposal to pay the CEO a pension allowance of 33% of salary has attracted huge negative publicity. It has become a significant distraction and has negatively impacted the brand. The HBSC CEO accepted a reduction in his pension from 35% to 10% of salary. Antonio Horta-Osorio should have accepted the same, i.e. a 10% pension. The difference would be £293,000 year, but this is ...

Invitation to Meet with Royal Mail, April 8th 15.30pm

Following the Royal Mail's AGM in 2018, at which 70% of shareholders rejected the Director's Remuneration Report, the Royal Mail are embarking on a series of consultative meetings with major shareholders and shareholders' representatives to discuss their concerns. Such a meeting has been called specifically for representatives of UK Shareholders Association and ShareSoc and will be held at the Royal Mail's premises at Victoria Embankment London on April 8th and attended by Orna Ni-Chionna, NED and Chair of the Remuneration Committee; Julia ...

Excessive Pensions, Lloyds Bank and RBS

Over 20% of shareholders voted against the Lloyds 2017 Remuneration Report. Lloyds then consulted with shareholders, but this still resulted in the awful recent press. Clearly the engagement process did not work. I therefore call for Lloyds Bank to implement a Shareholder Committee, which is a more formal and regular engagement process, which builds trust and understanding between committee members and the company. This can only improve the current processes. The Lloyds 2018 annual report says: Responding to feedback We were disappointed that our ...