The subject of board room pay is in the spotlight today, even in publications that largely ignore corporate news.
The Daily Mirror, not noted for its focus on events in the City, has gone to town on “Drastic” Dave Lewis, the new boss of supermarket chain Tesco (LON:TSCO).
Drastic Dave was paid £4.1mln for his first six months in the job, the Mirror notes, adding that the supermarket was loss-making during that period (albeit due to some accounting jiggery-pokery involving reductions in the carrying values of assets).
Once you factor in pension contributions, a 'golden hello' and other perks, Lewis was apparently paid £22,000 a day, which is almost as much as some Premiership footballers get paid for not playing for the first team.
Tesco's chief financial officer, Alan Stewart, must be positively green with envy, bumbling along on just £2.3mln during his five months in the job.
More details are available in the Tesco annual report, released yesterday.
Meanwhile, The Guardian is, perhaps predictably, getting vexed over comments from a top City fund manager, who says it is impossible to rein in board room pay.
Dominic Rossi, global chief investment officer at Fidelity Worldwide Investment, said that the firm may be a major stakeholder in many companies, but it does not have the power to insist on upper limits to the remuneration packages handed to executives of the companies it partially owns.
Rossi blamed US companies for inflating executive pay, and said he focused on forcing stronger links between pay and performance.
Elsewhere, Alison Brittain has joined the pitifully small contingent of women who hold the chief executive role at a FTSE 100 company; she has been unveiled as the new boss of Costa Coffee owner Whitbread (LON:WTB), and because we are focused on executive pay, I am obliged to reveal she will be on a basic annual salary of £775,000, but the total package could be worth up to £6.4mln.
Further down the food chain, private investors have been clicking on the operations update from antipodean oil & gas firm Mosman (LON:MSMN).
The company is doing some flow testing at Petroleum Creek, but, despite the promising name of the creek, recovered fluid thus far has been predominantly water.
It is not known why the fluid is predominantly water despite visible oil in the core and on wire-line tools at the zone being explored in the Cobden Limestone at the Cross Roads-1 well.
The technical team at Mosman is on the case, trying to solve this conundrum.
Finally, investors are soon to get the chance to gain exposure to “a unique, liquid exposure to Apax private equity funds and derived investments,” as Apax Global Alpha has announced its intention to raise the sterling equivalent of €250mln through a stock exchange listing.
Prior to admission to the main market, the company will acquire PCV Lux, which was formed in 2008 as an investment vehicle for certain partners and employees of Apax Partners LLP.
As at 31 March 2015, PCV's investments had an estimated net asset value of €611.1 million, and its assets include investments in, and commitments to invest in, four Apax Private Equity Funds as well as investments in debt and equities..