Smith & Nephew sparks biggest investor rebellion over executive pay

The biggest rebellion against excessive wages occurred at a medical device company Smith and nephew where nearly half of shareholders voted against plans to give Chief Executive Deepak Nath a huge pay rise.

Nath, who lives in Texas and earns £3.8m, could receive up to £9.3m this year if he hits all his targets.

Education firm Pearson has been included on the “list of shame” of companies where more than one in five investors are protesting against their executive pay for the second year in a row. It is the only company in the FTSE 100 index to have achieved this dubious distinction.

His boss, Andy Bird, saw his salary rise by almost two-thirds last year to £11.3m, including a £16,000-a-month rent allowance for a flat in New York.

Nearly a third of investors voted against Pearson’s pay report, compared with 46 percent who opposed the policy the previous year.

A major investor revolt is brewing at plant hire group Ashtead over plans that could almost double the salary of chief executive Brendan Horgan, who earned £5.8m last year.

Shareholder advisory group Glass Lewis criticised the proposals as “excessive”. The decision comes after a third of Ashtead investors voted against its 2022 pay report.

Ashtead, which has significant operations in the United States, is considering moving its stock exchange listing from London to New York.

But the number of major shareholder revolts over board pay has declined, despite the seemingly inexorable rise in executive pay.

Only three companies this year have been relegated to the list of shame with revolts of more than 20 percent.

This compares with 11 blue-chip companies that were named and shamed for boardroom greed last year.

Annual votes on directors’ pay are non-binding, meaning companies can ignore them and carry on as they please.

However, this can damage a company’s image. The rules came into force in 2017, when then-prime minister Theresa May ordered a list of companies that dished out high salaries. At the time, more than a fifth of FTSE-listed companies were included on the register kept by the trade body Investment Association (IA).

May described the offenders as people who “damage the fabric of society” by paying chief executives too much.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has also suffered a major pay revolt over the rewards lavished on its boss, Pascal Soriot, even though he has been the driving force behind its stellar performance.

All three companies on the AI ​​“misconduct” list have large operations in the United States, where higher pay for executives is tolerated and executives at rival companies tend to earn more.

Construction firm Berkeley has seen the size of its pay rebellion shrink from 40 per cent to 14 per cent. Its boss, Rob Perrins, has received more than £100m since taking over. His salary remained unchanged last year at £8m.

But he fell from 11th to 16th place among the highest-earning CEOs, while other bosses overtook him.