City boss: Why I am capping my pay
THE first female boss of a major City accountancy firm today announced a John Lewis-style profit share scheme that could boost salaries by 25 per cent as she called for a business revolution to bring back “trust and integrity”.
Sacha Romanovitch, 46, also revealed she is capping her own salary as she looks forward to taking over as chief executive at Grant Thornton next month. Her pay will be limited to a maximum of 20 times the average salary in her firm. That is a fraction of the 149 times average ratio across FTSE 100 firms and will lower her pay to below £1 million a year.
The introduction of the “shared-enterprise” system, modelled on that operated at John Lewis, will allow future profits to be shared between all of its 4,500 st aff instead of being restricted to the most senior.
Ms Romanovitch said: “The benchmark that we are working to is that in great organisations that do this, it ends up being between 10 and 25 per cent of a person’s salary. That is what they can potentially earn as a profit share. John Lewis does it, Arup [the engineering firm] is the other one that does it really well.”
Ms Romanovitch emphasised that all staff, including the 187 partners, would retain their existing pay deals. The profit share will come from extra money generated by collaborative working. The aim is to double the firm’s total profits by 2020. Her forwardthinking plans also include “crowdsourcing” new business ideas and potentially allowing lower-ranked staff to join board meetings. On the decision to cap her own pay, she said that earning more than 20 times the average pay of her staff “didn’t feel right” and that restricting her earnings was in line with the philosophy she wanted to instil in her firm.
Ms Romanovitch is also keen to encourage gender, social and other forms of diversity. She said a revolution in the way business is carried out in London was needed to restore “trust and integrity” and ensure the capital continued to thrive as a world economic powerhouse.
She warned that the City will be held back unless tradition is cast aside and insists that social media, working from home, meetings in cafes or outdoors rather than in boardrooms, and “breaking cover” should all be accepted.
“If there’s a message that I’d want to get out to people, it’s that this world needs people to be authentic, to be themselves, clear about what their passion and purpose is, and bring that into the business world. What you really want are people who think differently, have a different perspective on the world. If you look at Nobel Prizes now, most for great breakthrough thinking come from people with different perspectives collaborating.
Economists with physicists, philosophers with chemists, that’s what we’re looking for.”
Ms Romanovitch, a married mother of two who works from home in Devon on Fridays, is also a fan of social media and thinks firms that restrict staff use are wrong. “A lot of firms don’t let their people use social media because they’re worried that they will say something they shouldn’t.
“I find that a bit scary. I employ great people. If I was worried that they were going to say something on social media that they shouldn’t, I’d question whether I should employ them at all.”
Born in Barnet and from what she describes as a “fairly standard background”, Ms Romanovitch went to Ti ff i n Girls’ Grammar School and Oxford, but worries that today’s generation lacks the same opportunity for social mobility. She says this makes her determined to encourage social diversity and points to Grant Thornton’s support for the Evening Standard’s Ladder for London apprenticeship scheme as one sign of that commitment. She fears public faith in business is at an “all-time low”, but believes that the country should not lose sight of the benefits it brings.
“My ambition is that we can help to improve trust and integrity in the markets, through what we stand up for and the work we do.”
‘This world needs people to be authentic and clear what their passion is and bring it into business’
Sacha Romanovitch