£43m share bonuses announced for Sports Direct staff

TROUBLED RETAILER Sports Direct has confirmed that it will hand out £43m in share bonuses to staff.

The scandal-hit firm said yesterday that nearly 2,000 workers would receive 11.1m ordinary shares which had vested at 390p, creating a bonus pool of £43m.

The announcement means staff who had taken part in a share scheme at the start of 2011 could net an average of £5,550 in shares.

The decision on share bonuses comes just days after chairman Keith Hellawell scraped a majority backing for his re-election from independent shareholders during the firm’s annual general meeting.

The former West Yorkshire Police chief constable also defended the company’s decision not to shift some temporary staff onto full-time contracts and ruled out an independent review of working practices and corporate governance.

Focusing on the bonus awards, chief executive Mike Ashley said: “The people at Sports Direct deserve every penny of these bonuses.

“It’s thanks to their magnificent achievements and fantastic loyalty that we are able to make progress towards becoming the ‘Selfridges’ of sport.”

The bonuses will come on the top of normal wages paid out to staff. The company said in its annual report that permanent and temporary staff will receive awards of around £19m this year.

In 2013, approximately 2,000 Sports Direct staff secured an average of £70,000 after sharing £135m in shares.

Mr Hellawell, who has relied on majority shareholder Mr Ashley to keep him in post in the past, vowed to step down at this year’s AGM if hit with the same level of protest seen in 2016 when 54 per cent of independent investors voted against his re-election.

But he escaped a full-blown investor revolt after the majority of independent shareholders backed his re-election on Wednesday.