STANDARD Life chief executive David Nish has received more than £3 million of shares under a long-term incentive plan.

Mr Nish, who has previously faced criticism over his £5m pay package for 2012, immediately sold around £1.56m worth to cover the tax liability of the award.

He retained 505,718 shares which were worth almost £1.8m at Standard Life's closing share price of 354.5p.

With more than 1.7m shares Mr Nish's holding in the Edinburgh insurer is worth around £6m.

Standard Life Investments head Keith Skeoch received more than £2.7m of shares across two separate rewards schemes.

Mr Skeoch sold 371,520 shares at a price of £3.51 to raise £1.3m to cover the tax liability.

That meant he was left with 416,970 shares from the awards bringing his total holding to just short of 1.5m shares.

Group operations officer Sandy Begbie also received 264,924 shares while Standard Life's UK and Europe chief executive Paul Matthews received 253,909.

As well as selling some shares to cover the tax on the awards Mr Begbie offloaded 87,979 at a price of £3.51 for a gain of more than £300,000.