Shareholders reject £270m bonus for Micro Focus bosses

SOFTWARE giant Micro Focus will push ahead with plans to give bosses more time to win £270m in bonuses, despite the proposal having been shot down by investors.

At the company’s AGM, shareholders rejected the remuneration report by a slim margin, with 50.4pc voting against. However, given it was an advisory vote, Micro Focus is expected to continue with the changes.

The plans allow more than 30 senior bosses a further year, to September 2020, to get the company’s share price up to £34 from its current price of £19.88.

It is thought executive chairman Kevin Loosemore alone could stand to take home as much as £37.4m in bonuses if the company hits its new, extended targets.

Stephen Murdoch, the chief executive, would make £32.2m, while Mike Phillips, director of mergers and acquisitions, would get £23m.

Micro Focus said it needed the extra time after admitting its troubled £6.6bn merger with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s software division was a year behind schedule.

It said in the report that it “wanted to ensure that executives remained incentivised to deliver significant value from the HPE Software transaction and align reward to the delivery of the 2020 business plan”.

After yesterday’s vote, Amanda Brown, chairman of the remuneration committee, said: “We acknowledge and respect the concerns of our shareholders.”

She said the firm had already committed to “a thorough review of our reward strategy” with the aim of having a new policy in place in time for the 2020 AGM. Micro Focus said all its other resolutions passed.