Fatcats whose perks are worth £11m a year
Business chiefs get cash for jets, schools and even to move house
THE bosses of Britain’s biggest firms are being handed millions of pounds in perks to allow them to pay for school fees, move house, and even use private jets for personal trips.
A Daily Mail investigation has laid bare the handouts – worth almost £11million last year alone.
Perks that are common include a chauffeur- driven car, medical and life insurance, private healthcare and financial advice to help them keep as much as possible of their fortune beyond the clutches of the taxman.
But some of the biggest names in the FTSE 100 also get extravagant extras that in some cases average workers would take more than a decade to earn. This is despite the typical pay of a FTSE 100 chief executive now being around £4.5million a year.
They include the chief executive of Tesco, Dave Lewis, who was handed £142,000 to help him move around 35 miles from London to nearer the company’s head office in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. This was doled out even though the commute is around an hour, houses are a quarter of the price and Mr Lewis, 52, earned £4.2million last year.
The chief executive of Argos, John Rogers, 48, who made £1.6million last year, also got £42,647 in accommodation costs, and a £6,500 travel allowance because he frequently had to visit Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire from his home in Surrey.
John Pettigrew, 48, chief executive of National Grid, was given £497,000 of benefits as part of his £4.7million pay packet – the bulk of which was to help him move the 90 miles from Warwick to London.
And in one of the most outlandish perks, the chief executive of Carnival, which owns P&O Cruises, can get up to £155,000 to use the company’s Gulfstream G650 private jet as he wishes.
Arnold Donald, 62, can use the jet for up to 30 hours a year, and last year racked up a bill of £76,000. Mr Donald, a married father of three, made £7.4million last year.
Other extravagant perks include the £1.2million for taxes and mortgage interest that Mike Wells, 57, chief executive of insurer Prudential, was forced to pay when he moved from the US to England to take the job – on top of £5.7million of other pay.
Banker Stuart Gulliver, the 58year- old head of scandal- hit HSBC, stayed in properties owned by the lender which would otherwise have cost him £263,000. He earned £5.7million last year.
Christopher Bailey, 46, who as chief executive of fashion house Burberry earned £ 3.5million, received £469,000 in benefits.
Stefan Stern, of think-tank the High Pay Centre, said: ‘These deals add insult to injury.
‘They add to the sense there’s one rule for the City elite and another for everyone else, and it’s bewildering to most people that they get extra payments on top of their already vast salaries.
‘Every other employee has to fund their lifestyle choices out of their salary, and there’s no reason why chief executives shouldn’t do the same.’
The perks of the City elite were laid bare following an audit of the accounts of Britain’s biggest 100 companies by the Mail. Perks totalling almost £11million were handed to the chief executives of FTSE 100 firms according to the latest accounts.
The revelations highlight the scale of the gap between company bosses and their workers. But it also affects families all over the country because the pension funds that look after the savings workers put aside for retirement invest in many of these blue chip firms.
Millions of workers saving for retirement have money tied up in stock market listed companies such as Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Vodafone, BP and Glaxosmith Kline through their pensions.
The pay deals of these bosses are contained in annual reports – and include their salaries, bonuses, long-term share incentives and taxable benefits. These deals are set by a pay committee at each company, and approved at a yearly shareholder meeting.
However, while there has been outrage at the scale of some of the pay packets and bonuses of bosses, the details of their perks are buried in the small print of these annual reports.
It is normal for bosses to claim costs for business travel. These are not taxable and therefore not included in the company reports. But other perks are taxable.
Argos said: ‘As part of his role, John [Rogers] is required to spend a considerable amount of time each week away from home.
The accommodation and travel costs associated with this are business expenses, rather than perks for personal gain.’ National Grid said: ‘National Grid’s board asked John Pettigrew to relocate from Warwick to London.
‘In keeping with our relocation policy, which is applicable to all employees whose jobs move location, the company reimbursed him for expenses related to the relocation.
‘These included the rental of accommodation in the short-term and associated expenses, the payment of stamp duty on his purchased property and reasonable travel expenses between London and the Midlands before the purchase was completed.’
Carnival said Mr Donald had to reimburse the company for any use of the private jet over the £155,000 a year threshold.
The other companies declined to comment.