City heavyweights including L&G’s Nigel Wilson, Sainsbury’s David Tyler and BNY Mellon’s Helena Morrissey join working group to overhaul executive pay
A new panel of city executives is exploring whether to scrap long-term share awards as part of a radial overhaul of city boardroom culture.
The Executive Remuneration Working Group was set up by the Investment Association, which represents the UK's £5.5 trillion asset-management industry, to examine how to simplify executive pay.
Daniel Godfrey, chief executive of the Investment Association, said current complex pay structures make it difficult to properly judge performance, which has been, “an increasing source of reputational damage to business and of concern to investment managers.”
The group will include Nigel Wilson, group chief executive of Legal & General whose investment arm is the FTSE 100's biggest single institutional investor; David Tyler, chairman of Sainsbury's board and non-exec director at Burberry; Helena Morrissey chief executive of BNY Mellon's Newton Investment Management the Investment Association's chair; Edi Truell, who advises the Mayor of London Boris Johnson on his pensions and investment fund, sitting on the strategic advisory board of Lancashire and London Pensions Partnership and Russell King, chair of the remuneration committees for Aggreko and Spectris, the FTSE 250 precision instrument manufacturer.
The group hopes to report its proposals in the spring of 2016.
The move comes after a PwC survey revealed yesterday that more than a third of FTSE 100 chiefs did not get a pay rise this year, and those who did averaged a raise of three per cent.
Average payouts remain at 72 per cent of the maximum award available.