HSBC director set for £10m pay windfall
HSBC’s investment banking chief Stuart Gulliver is set to pocket a bumper payout of over £10m, after profits at the global banking and markets arm jumped threefold to $10.48bn (£7bn) during the 2009 financial year.
Gulliver, 50, who joined HSBC from university 30 years ago, will receive a bonus of £9m in deferred stock, as well as his basic salary of £800,000 and pension contributions.
Chief executive Michael Geoghegan leapt to Gulliver’s defence, claiming the payout was below his peer average and was justified in the light of the division’s stellar performance.
“I could lose Stuart or any of his team to the competition at any time,” Geoghegan said. “If we were to recruit a replacement we would have to pay them significantly more.”
News of the payout came after Geoghegan said he would give up his own £4m bonus to charity, following decisions last week from Barclays bosses John Varley and Bob Diamond and RBS chief Stephen Hester to forego their bonuses for 2009. Peter Sands, the chief executive of Standard Chartered, is expected to follow suit by donating his £2m award to charity.
HSBC said Geoghegan’s £1.1m fixed salary had yet to be changed in the wake of talks with shareholders over a planned increase to around £1.4m, though the bank plans to implement the hike before the end of the year.
The bank has earmarked $355m for the government’s Bank Payroll Tax.
JOHN CROMPTON
NEW HEAD OF EQUITY CAPITAL MARKETS AT HSBC
JOHN Crompton, the capital markets veteran who quit UK Financial Investments (UKFI) earlier this year to return to the City, has landed a new job as global head of equity capital markets (ECM) at HSBC.
Crompton joined UKFI from Merrill Lynch in November 2008, to manage the sale of the UK taxpayers’ stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group back to the private sector. He left after his bid to replace John Kingman in the UKFI chief executive’s job last year was scuppered by the appointment of Robin Budenberg, the UBS veteran who worked with the government on the bank bailout in 2008.
Crompton is thought to be in line to start at HSBC as early as next month. He replaces current ECM head Russell Julius, who is moving to become chairman of the division.
Prior to his role as head of ECM for the EMEA region at Merrill, Crompton worked at Morgan Stanley. He also spent nearly two years on secondment as a corporate finance adviser to the Treasury between 2005 and 2007.