£5.7m for the Frenchman who flogged London Stock Exchange
THE London Stock Exchange chief executive who led calls to sell his business to the Germans pocketed £5.7m last year.
Wine-loving Frenchman Xavier Rolet has been a cheerleader for the £21bn tie-up with Frankfurt-based Deutsche Boerse, which was attacked for harming the national interest.
But although his battle to push the deal through seems to have ended in failure, he still trousered £5.7m for his work in 2016.
The payments mean 57-year-old Rolet – who owns a French vineyard where he runs wine courses with second wife Nicole – has earned a total of £25m in eight-and-a-half years at the business. Campaigners claimed this vast wage bill showed the extent of corporate greed in the City.
Rolet’s salary rose 5.6pc to £788,000 last year and he earned an annual bonus of £1.6m. He also picked up £3m in long-term bonus payments, £42,000 in benefits such as insurance and a car allowance, and £197,000 towards his pension.
Stefan Stern of the High Pay Centre said Rolet’s pay package ‘has been pumped up by share price moves triggered because the market wrongly thought this deal would happen’, adding: ‘These excessive pay packets are problematic and this is not good timing if the deal is crumbling.’
Rolet was born into a military family and served in the French air force before becoming a banker.
He worked at international lenders including Goldman Sachs and ill-fated Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers – whose collapse helped to trigger the financial crisis – before joining LSE in 2009.
A keen amateur motor racer, Rolet has competed in the cross-desert Dakar Rally several times.
He married American-Italian wife Nicole in 1997 and also enjoys the relaxed French lifestyle, buying a Provencal estate in 1993 with 74 acres of vineyards and bee hives.
LSE sources stressed the boss would not gain financially if the German takeover went ahead. European Union competition authorities are expected to voice their opposition to the deal next month – stopping the plans in their tracks.
Father- of- three Rolet has refused to sell the firm’s Italian bond trading platform to appease the watchdog’s concerns.
Although he is not in line for any extra bonus if the tie-up goes ahead, Rolet has benefited from a jump in the share price after the potential tie-up was announced.
The stock has risen more than 35pc since the deal was made public. Because Rolet’s bonus is partly paid in shares, this boosts his earnings. Profits at LSE rose 6pc last year to £426.1m, while turnover was up 14pc to £1.5bn.
And bosses hiked the dividend by 20pc to 43.2p per share in a bid to appease investors left disappointed by the takeover’s bleak prospects. The collapse of the deal came after months of pressure from both sides of the Channel. British critics warned that the tie-up could give the EU a huge advantage as Brexit negotiations began. Meanwhile, German politicians issued demands for the merged company’s headquarters to be relocated to Frankfurt. And Deutsche’s boss Carsten Kengeter denies any wrongdoing as he faces an insider trading probe in Germany. LSE shares fell 1pc, or 33p, to 3065p.