The 2009 FD Salary Survey

Download a full PDF of The 2009 FD Salary Survey

Well, the wallet has taken a bit of a battering this year. Blame the bonuses. For the second year in a row, FTSE-100 finance directors’ take-home pay has fallen – in fact, the total is now below a million pounds for the first time since our 2006 survey. Our bonuses table reveals the cause of some of the pain, listing just some of the FDs who have had no annual cash bonus. Banks feature prominently, but not exclusively; Trevor Reid at mining group Xstrata had an extra £1.5m last year, but zip this year, for example.

Most have the comfort of a sizeable increase in basic salary, however: the FTSE-100 average is up an inflation-busting 8.2%. Kevin Hayes at Man Group tops the list again this year, though he has had the benefit of putting in a full 12 months’ work this time. Paul Richardson at WPP saw the biggest increase in total pay, thanks to a bonus that was a Ford Ka less than a million quid.

It is, if anything, an even more dramatic story in the FTSE-250, where basic pay was more subdued, with just a 2.1% increase overall, but a near-30% drop in bonus payouts, taking total pay down by a hurtful 12.2%. Investec’s Glynn Burger remains top of the 250, even though his bonus fell by nearly £1m. The good news story in this index is Seamus Keating at Logica who earned no bonus in our last survey, but a hefty £654,000 this time round, propelling him from a mid-table ranking to fourth position.

As last year, full details from our 13th annual FD Salary Survey – including the FTSE-Aim-504 – are only available at www.financialdirector.co.uk/surveys. And, also as last year, our data is provided by the corporate governance research consultancy Manifest, so many thanks to them. The rankings, ratios and other analysis are home-grown here at Financial Director.

As in previous years, the data represents basic salary, other benefits such as cars, health insurance or relocation allowances and annual bonuses. Some of these bonuses are voluntarily or compulsorily deferred, either by being switched into shares or simply with time restrictions put in place to ensure continued service. Long-term performance schemes, pension benefits and share options are excluded from these tables.

Here’s a few more of our main findings:
* On the face of it, women FDs’ average pay has taken a real battering, though the numbers take a hit in large measure because Helen Weir now has an operational role at Lloyds Banking Group and Stacey Cartwright at Burberry didn’t repeat her £510,000 bonus this time. There are still only two women FDs in the FTSE-100 – and seven (one fewer than last year) in the FTSE-250.
* We aren’t supposed to be ageist these days, of course, but John Trotman, 31, at Big Yellow Group remains the youngest FD in the FTSE-350. Last year he had a seven-year advantage over the next-youngest FD, but this year Andrey Maruta, 33, at Peter Hambro Mining, is in the same ballpark.
* Our High Flyers index – which divides total pay by age to give a pay-per-year-of-age figure – is an ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek metric that tries to spot youthful, well-paid high-fliers as well as the seniors who remain emphatically at the top of the tree. Notables this year include Miguel Perry at Eurasian Natural Resources (pay £1.2m, age 38, PPYOA £31,921) and Byron Grote at BP (£2.1m, age 61, PPYOA £34,660). Top of the list is Man Group’s Kevin Hayes who earns more than fifty grand for every one of his 49 years of age.