As aliens go, Bart Becht looks pretty human, even if his £93m reward for running Reckitt Benckiser looks astronomical. But if Barclays’ Bob Diamond was denounced as the “unacceptable face of banking” for allegedly receiving £63m, what is Becht?
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Is there any point shareholders voting on companies’ remuneration reports? By the time they reject the boardroom pay the directors have already pocketed the proceeds and there is nothing to stop the company behaving as badly again next year.
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If the Treasury is worried about companies going overseas perhaps it should stop looking at corporation tax rates and concentrate on income taxes. It is the 50p top rate on pay that is now making firms look abroad.
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Setting quotas to increase the number of female managers at Deutsche Telekom has upset only one group more than the men who dominate its management – the women who hold one senior job in eight. Having qualified on merit they resent their sisters being given a free lift to the top.
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How appropriate that the terms of Marc Bolland’s recruitment to Marks & Spencer (LON:MKS) were announced on the last day of the football transfer window.  M&S is paying a £7.5m fee to attract him from rival retailer Wm Morrison (LON:MRW).
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So now we know the price of principles. Less than 10 per cent. For an extra  £1bn from Kraft Foods, Cadbury’s (LON:CBRY) directors have melted like Dairy Milk on a warm day and crumbled like a Flake bar.
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When companies need a new leader, why do they so often call in the City headhunters and search for external candidates instead of promoting from inside? Is it because the internal applicants’ faults are known while the unknown outsiders offer hope?
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The new corporate governance code to come in during 2010 will make a major concession: it accepts that boardrooms have become stuffed with independent amateurs, leaving insufficient executives who understand the business.
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It’s hard enough finding good non-executive directors but now the regulators are looking at how they can be voted off the board as soon as they are appointed. The new corporate governance code could include annual re-election for all non-execs.
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Women in boardrooms is usually seen as a sexist issues. It’s not; it’s about xenophobia. Selection committees are not anti-women but anti-British.
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