Legal & General paid chief Nigel Wilson £4.2m last year

The total remuneration received by Wilson, who heads up insurance and investment group Legal & General, included a base salary of £808,000 and also £2m from a three-year performance share plan which vested last year.

 

To qualify for the full award of shares, total shareholder return has to be in the 80th percentile or above, and in the period between 27 April 2011 and 26 April 2014, the insurer’s total shareholder return was 106.2 per cent.

 

Legal & General saw revenue grow by more than £10bn in 2014, up to £51.5bn from £39.3bn. Gross written premium also increased,  from £6.16bn in 2013 to £10.19bn, which helped push pre-tax profit up to £1.41bn from £1.33bn. The group dividend went up by 21 per cent, to 11.25p per share.

 

Wilson said he was “excited and proud” about Legal & General’s performance, and added that the company intends to put £15bn into direct investments, including UK infrastructure and housing, with £5.7bn already invested. “Investing in Britain’s infrastructure can give us long-term growth and make us economically and socially useful to society,” he said. 

 

Wilson did not give a timeframe for making the investments, however he said the firm planned to invest its shareholder and customer funds for long periods of time, “getting a return on our ‘slow money’ over 30,40 or even 50 years”.

 

Shares in Legal & General were down slightly by 0.21 per cent yesterday.