FT chief returns £510,000 rise and admits it ‘created concerns’
THE chief executive of the Financial Times has been forced to hand back a £510,000 pay rise following an outcry among journalists, who are now threatening to ballot for strike action.
John Ridding said he would return the money minus tax of around £230,000 and agree a new pay deal with Nikkei, the Japanese owner of the Financial Times.
The 53-year-old was paid £2.6m last year, compared with £1.6m in 2015, when Nikkei bought the FT from the education publisher Pearson for £844m. In an internal memo seen by The Daily Telegraph Mr Ridding said his new remuneration structure “should take into account my pay level before the acquisition”.
His decision to hand back last year’s pay rise was announced hours before a meeting of the FT chapel of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). It was called to discuss Mr Ridding’s pay after union members expressed “collective outrage” over an award they said “makes a mockery of any concept of fairness and breaks the bounds of corporate integrity”.
In his memo Mr Ridding said his pay had been “independently assessed and benchmarked and its structure was highly performance-related”. But he added: “While our performance has been strong, I recognise that the consequent jump in my own total reward in 2017 feels anomalous and has created concerns.”
Mr Ridding’s announcement failed to quell rebellion in the FT newsroom, however. The NUJ meeting voted in favour of a motion demanding further action on pay as rank and file staff had been “squeezed in order to pay for increases at the top of the organisation”.
It urged Mr Ridding to “clarify what he is being paid this year, and to forego his bonus this year and put it back into the pot for all employees’ salaries”.
The NUJ also called on the FT board, which includes editor Lionel Barber, to reveal how much every director is paid and to tie any future increases to pay rises for staff. Trainee salaries should be improved and other staff should be awarded above-inflation increases, it said. The motion threatened a ballot for industrial action if the NUJ did not receive a “timely response”.
The controversy was sparked last month when The Telegraph reported Mr Ridding’s pay rise alongside a 40pc decline in operating profit to £4m.
Mr Ridding said his returned rise will partly be used to create a “women’s development fund” to “support the advancement of women into more senior roles and reduce the gender pay gap”. Nikkei endorsed the move.