Shareholders lambast Standard Life over excessive boadroom pay deals
Standard Life faced a backlash from shareholders at its annual general meeting on Tuesday with 22 per cent of votes cast going against the investment group’s executive pay report.
Other big companies caught up in a so-called shareholder spring in the past few weeks include BP, Smith & Nephew, Shire, Regus, Weir Group and Anglo American.
The attack came despite Standard Life’s new chief executive Keith Skeoch volunteering to cut his own long-term incentive plan to a maximum 400 per cent of his salary from 500 per cent. The group’s annual report published earlier this year showed Skeoch’s package stood at £3.64m.
In a statement, Standard Life's chairman Gerry Grimstone said: “Operating responsibly means that we should run our company to the standards that as a major investor we rightly expect from others. This includes how we pay our senior executives.
“We must have good people managing our company who are fairly incentivised in what is a global marketplace but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be conscious of our societal impact and the views of others.”