Spotlight falls on North bosses' pay packets

Jan 15 2012 by Tom Rowley, Sunday Sun

‘FAT cats’ at top North firms scooped an average pay rise of 17%, despite the continued economic crisis.

A Sunday Sun special report examined pay packets at firms across the region.

And while chiefs at some of our biggest companies actually took pay cuts, there were some huge hikes.

Our survey revealed the North’s top-paid boss took a 37% rise to rake in almost £1.6m - a little over a year after 700 jobs were cut at the firm.

Paul Walker, former boss of Newcastle software firm Sage, earned a pay package of £1,592,000 in his last year at the firm.

The sum included an £801,000 bonus and £21,000 of benefits in kind.

Seven company chiefs pocketed rises of at least half their pay pot the year before.

The bosses earned an average pay packet of over £518,000 - 23 times the average North East salary. And three bosses took home more than £1m in total, while ten got bonuses of more than the entire salary of Prime Minister David Cameron.

A third of the bosses worked for public firms - owned by shareholders.

Our special report comes after a cross section of North leaders highlighted the issue last week.

Many signed up to a ‘January Declaration’ - which warned that extreme differences in pay and bonuses are undermining society.

Ronnie Campbell, MP for Blyth Valley, hit out at the pay packets.

But the North East Chamber of Commerce pointed out that many of the region’s bosses actually took pay cuts and said that it was important that success was rewarded.

Seven of the bosses in our league table took pay cuts while four more did not get rises.

The Sunday Sun probed the latest published accounts at Companies House of 30 of the region’s top firms.

Many of the accounts ran up to the end of 2010 but some covered different periods. Most were logged last year.

Mr Walker topped the league table, as his six-figure bonus came on top of £770,000 salary and fees in the financial year to September 2010.

The bonus was awarded at the end of the year, even though 700 workers had been shed in May 2009.

Sage pointed out that bonuses fell in the year redundancies were announced. All redundancies were voluntary.

Two other bosses had total pay packets above £1m: Keith Ludeman, former head of the transport firm Go Ahead, and John Watson, who runs Bellway, based in Newcastle.

Mr Watson’s pay package soared 36% to £1,091,148 - including a £396,000 bonus.

The rise came even though the home builder shed 850 jobs the year before.

Bellway said that the rise was because the firm went from making a £36.5m loss to racking up a £44.4m profit.

James Ramsbotham, Chief Executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce, said: “These wage rises are not the norm across regional businesses.

“We should also remember many executives took the same reductions as staff members in recent years to keep redundancies to a minimum during the worst economic downturn in generations.

“Indeed, many company chief executives and directors took greater reductions to their pay packets to help keep companies afloat.”