Daily Mail - 13.08.2019

Page 66 Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Bosses paid millions

just to move house

TOP bosses have received

more than £6m in relocation

allowances in recent years,

the Mail has found.
Some chief executives moved
less than 100 miles due to work
commitments but received hun-
dreds of thousands of pounds
from their Footsie employers.
Stamp duty, school fees and
flights to visit their home countries
have also been thrown into the
generous deals. This is despite the
pay of a FTSE 100 chief executive
averaging £4.6m a year – 160 times
the average UK salary.
There was fury at National Grid
chief John Pettigrew’s £497,000
allowance to relocate just 97 miles
from Warwick to London.
As power cuts brought parts of
Britain to a standstill on Friday,
Pettigrew was accused by Labour
MP Chris Evans of accepting
‘rewards for failure’.
Pettigrew, 50, was earning £4.6m
when he took over in 2016 and was
paid the money to cover travel
expenses, a short-term let and
stamp duty on a London property.
Relocation handouts have long

been used to attract top talent

from around the world to British

firms. They form part of benefits

packages, which often include life

insurance, chauffeured cars or gym

and club memberships.

Mike Wells, of insurer Prudential,

received £2.3m over four years in

mortgage repayments, moving

costs and flights home when he

relocated from the US to the UK.

The staggering figure, worth ten

times the average UK house,

included £845,000 in stamp duty –

the amount payable on a £7.75m

UK home bought today. Hamish

Inventor sues BP for £1m

AN iNvENTOR behind the first

electric car charging points is suing

BP over a £1m bonus package.

Calvey Taylor-Haw claims the

oil supermajor is refusing to

hand over share options which

he is owed as part of a deal made

when he sold his technology.

The 62-year-old will have a

showdown with the company at

an employment tribunal later

this month.

Taylor-Haw started charging

firm Elektromotive in a Batter-

sea flat in 2003, and introduced

the first commercial car charg-

ing points in London two years

later. in 2017 he sold the busi-

ness to rival Chargemaster – now

part of BP – and was given share

options worth just over £1m as

part of the deal.

He was kept on staff and tasked

with inventing charging stations

which could be used by house-

holds and small companies.

But lawyers for Taylor-Haw

claim he was undermined by

senior management before being

made redundant after five

months. it is claimed he was

repeatedly told that he would

keep the share options despite

losing his job. But when BP

bought Chargemaster for £130m

last year, Taylor-Haw discovered

the bonus had been taken away.

He is suing BP for unfair dis-

missal and is being represented

by law firm Fox Williams.

A spokesman for BP said: ‘BP

Chargemaster intends to fully

defend this claim in a tribunal

later this month and will not be

commenting further.’

EVE Sleep is in ‘early stage’ merger talks with

rival mattress-maker Simba.

The two retailers, which both operate online

and deliver mattresses directly to customers’

homes, have been facing difficulties in the increas-

ingly consolidated sector in recent years.

A deal would improve the buying power of the

two firms and cut their costs as they both

attempt to return to profitability.

Eve, whose biggest shareholder is Woodford

Investment Management with a 31.1pc stake,

said there is ‘no certainty’ that the potential

deal would succeed.

Eve has had its shares on the AIM market sus-

pended. Simba, meanwhile, was forced to slash

its valuation in February from £200m to around

£20m to secure new growth funding.

Eve Sleep getting

into bed with rival

EMBATTLED fund manager Neil Woodford nar-

rowly avoided a 20pc share-price plunge at one of

his former stock picks yesterday after offloading it

during his fire sale.

Shares in fish health and technology firm Bench-

mark Holdings, which Woodford has backed since

it went public in 2013, tanked after warning that

full-year profits will be lower than expected. it

closed down 20.2pc, or 10.5p, at 41.5p.

Woodford held a nearly 20pc stake in Benchmark

until December, when he trimmed his holding

back to 12.45pc.

He sold most of his remaining stake to Norwe-

gian investor Kverva Finans at the start of July

while his main Equity income fund was sus-

pended, and now holds less than 5pc.

Sheffield-based Benchmark said it was hit by

‘challenging conditions in the global shrimp and

Mediterranean sea bass and bream markets’.

Benchmark all at

sea as profits fall

SHARES in M&C Saatchi crashed

nearly 25pc after it said account-

ing problems and property

changes had cost it nearly £8m.

The advertising agency said the

discovery followed a review that

was launched in May.

It said auditor KPMG had found

evidence of accounting rules not

being applied properly.

M&C Saatchi said it had subse-

quently taken a one-off charge

of £6.4m, comprising of £4.9m for

problems found in the review

and another £1.5m ‘as a conserv-

ative measure’ in case more

issues were uncovered. Office

charges also cost it £1.4m.

The company has also commis-

sioned an independent review of

the accounting problems and

said the findings of this were

expected in November.

The announcement rattled

investors, who sent its shares

tumbling 24.5pc, or 83p, to 256p.

Saatchi’s £8m

audit blunder

THE returning boss of Cenkos has

finally been given the thumbs-up

to retake his position at the strug-

gling City broker.

Jim Durkin, who left the firm in

2017, has been waiting more than

nine months for the Financial

Conduct Authority to green-light

his comeback. The approval proc-

ess should usually take only three

months, but the Mail understands

that Durkin was called into a

number of interviews with the

City watchdog.

Anthony Hotson, who took over

from Durkin in 2017, announced

that he would leave Cenkos last

year after it revealed a 90pc drop

in profits.

A number of shareholders had

raised concerns that Durkin was

not the right person to lead

Cenkos through its turnaround.

Durkin finally

back at Cenkos

Relocation

allowance

The move

Distance

Pounds

per mile

Diageo

Kathryn

Mikells

£162,000

United States

to London

3,400 miles

£50

Prudential

Mike

Wells

£2.3m

United States

to London

3,800 miles

£610

Amigo

Hamish

Paton

£325,000

London to

Bournemouth

108 miles

£3,000

National Grid

John

Pettigrew

£497,000

Warwick

to London

97 miles

£5,100

Tesco

Dave

Lewis

£142,000

London to

Welwyn GC

25 miles

£5,700

by Tom Witherow

Paton, chief executive of the

high interest lender Amigo,

was paid up to £325,000 towards

his move from London to near

Bournemouth, a distance of

just 108 miles, when he was

appointed in April.

Tesco boss Dave Lewis was

given £142,000 when he moved

out of London in 2016 and

closer to the supermarket’s

headquarters in Welwyn Gar-

den City, Hertfordshire. The

payment, for a journey that

would otherwise take 37 min-

utes by train, triggered anger

from shareholders.

National Grid said Pettigrew’s

reimbursement for location

costs was ‘applicable to all

employees whose jobs move

location’. He has been with

the company since 1991 and

risen up the ranks.

Last year his salary increased

to £944,000 while his long-term

performance awards rose to

£2.2m, part of a total package

worth £4.6m.

David Schwimmer, boss of

the London Stock Exchange,

will receive £550,000 over three

years in accommodation and

flights after moving from the

US in April 2018.

Aviva’s boss Maurice Tulloch

used a £250,000 allowance to

relocate from Canada when

the FTSE 100 firm promoted

him in March.

Diageo finance chief Kath-

ryn Mikells was given £162,000

in 2017 to move from the US

to the UK – which the brewer

said could include a housing

allowance and school fees.