I’m worth it, says Reckitt’s £90m man
ReCkITT Benckiser’s outgoing boss insisted he was worth every penny of his lavish pay having picked up almost £90m since taking the top job.
Rakesh kapoor ( pictured) said he had delivered huge returns for shareholders during his eight years running the consumer goods giant, which makes durex condoms and Nurofen painkillers.
The comments came as Reckitt delivered a 10pc rise in sales to £12.6bn in 2018. Profits were up 11pc to £3bn.
Investors welcomed the figures, the last set of annual results before kapoor leaves.
under kapoor’s leadership, Reckitt shares have risen by nearly 95pc compared to a 33pc rise in the FTse 100 over the same period. They rose 4.6pc, or 279p, to 6296p yesterday. But kapoor’s bumper pay of nearly £86m while in charge has sparked a series of shareholder revolts. The 60-year-old could still pocket shares worth another £31m, depending on performance, potentially taking his pay since 2011 to £117m. defending his pay yesterday, kapoor said: ‘All I would say is if you had invested in our company in 2011 and stayed with it over the period of time until the end of last year, you would have outperformed the FTse by quite a material factor. you would have really done very well with that investment, despite the fact we did not have the best performance in the last 12 to 18 months.
‘over the last eight years, we have had premium performance and premium valuecreation for shareholders and we have been ahead of the market in the top-tier companies,’ he said. ‘We have done a really good job in terms of outperforming those benchmarks. That is where I would leave it.’
kapoor talked up what he sees as his biggest achievement – the reorganisation of Reckitt into two distinct arms, one for health and another for hygiene and household goods.
He also said it had regained momentum after a string of setbacks, including disruption at its dutch factory, product failures, an exodus of bosses, a cyber-attack costing £100m and a scandal in south korea that saw one of Reckitt’s disinfectants blamed for the deaths of children.
kapoor said the company was better prepared to defend itself against cyber attacks and apologised once again for the south korean tragedy. ‘Clearly it was a tragedy. I feel terrible about the fact it happened and we have done everything possible to compensate people and play our rightful role.’
THe boss of tobacco giant Imperial Brands has been handed £4.5m worth of shares. Alison Cooper, 52, who is chief executive of the firm which owns davidoff cigarettes, has been given 146,724 shares as part of the company’s long-term incentive plan. In addition, 23,243 shares as part of the same plan have vested.