SIR George Mathewson was waved off with a £113,000 golden goodbye when the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief stepped down from his part-time position as chairman of rail and bus group Stagecoach in April.
While Sir George's package for the year to the end of April totalled £283,000, Sir Brian Souter's last pay packet as chief executive amounted to £1.2 million, including a £382,000 cash bonus, as the co-founder of the Perth-based transport group stepped up to replace Sir George.
Sir George, who had enjoyed a near doubling in his fee at Stagecoach from £84,000 in 2011 to £165,000 in 2012, got another boost after Stagecoach handed him a one-off payment of £113,333 on his retirement from office.
Sir Brian received a 37.2% pay rise for the year as his £599,000 basic salary was topped up £200,000 in lieu of a pension contribution and £22,000 of benefits in kind.
Sir Brian opted not to take £157,000 of his bonus to fund a medical screening programme for bus business employees. The remaining bonus was paid in cash, rather than containing a portion of shares which, since the financial crisis, are typically awarded so they can be withdrawn if it is later shown the bonus was not fully merited. Stagecoach posted an 8.1% rise in underlying profits to £218.9m for the year to the end of April.
The role of non-executive directors has come under increased scrutiny after it was revealed earlier this month that Lord Smith of Kelvin, the Scots chairman of the Green Investment Bank, is paid £120,000 a year to work one day a week.
A recent pay survey found that non-executive chairs of top companies received average pay rises of 6% last year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article