The gambling company that owns Ladbrokes Coral and Foxy Bingo faces a bruising shareholder rebellion over the “excessively disproportionate” £67m paid to two of its bosses.
GVC, a FTSE 250 company with its headquarters on the Isle of Man but mainly operating from Gibraltar, has awarded its chief executive, Kenny Alexander, £45m in share options since 2016. The chairman, Larry Feldman, has picked up share options worth another £22.5m, thanks to a scheme linked to the firm’s share price, which hit an all-time high of £10.26 last week.
The shareholder advice bodies Pirc and Glass Lewis are advising investors to vote against the pay report at the company’s annual meeting in Gibraltar next week. Glass Lewis said Alexander’s pay – which is about 550 times that paid to average employees – was “excessively disproportionate”.
Luke Hildyard, a director of the remuneration thinktank the High Pay Centre, said it was outrageous that GVC had continued to award huge pay packets after more than 45% of investors failed to support the company’s pay policy at its AGM last year. The protest vote came in response to Alexander’s total pay hitting £19.4m for 2016, slightly more than the £18m he received in the company’s most recent remuneration report.
“Clearly they’ve completely disregarded the strong vote against last year and are continuing with a similar approach to pay,” Hildyard said. “You’d hope that there will be an even stronger vote against this year.”
However, Hildyard pointed out that such votes are only advisory in nature, with investors only entitled to a vote on company pay policies once every three years.
