2006 FD Salary Survey

Who wants to be a millionaire? Judging by this year’s salary
survey, there are almost 30 finance directors in the FTSE-350 who seem to have
no objection to the idea. No fewer than 23 FTSE-100 FDs earned more than £1m in
pay, perks and bonuses in the most recent financial year. In the FTSE-250,
another half a dozen FDs are in the seven-digit pay bracket.

Click
here to download a PDF of the survey.

Using data kindly provided by BoardEx, the international boardroom analysis
experts, we’ve calculated that, over the past year, the job of being a FTSE-100
FD has earned 10% more, while average pay for a FTSE-250 FD has gone up 7.6%.

This year, we also include the FTSE-Aim 50 – though because of the reduced
disclosure requirements there is less salary information available than there is
for fully-listed companies. There are also more than a dozen companies in this
index that don’t have an FD on board. But of those that do, the average pay
package is £207,000.

So FDs are getting more money – and better looking, as well. Well, younger
looking, at least. The average age of a FTSE-100 FD has fallen from 49 to 48
over the past year, while, at 46, FDs in the FTSE-250 are a year younger than
they were. Aim FDs are making their mark at the age of 44.

As ever, be mindful of the notes in the tables: quite a number of FDs took up
their current role part-way through the year and so their reported salary data
doesn’t reflect a full-year’s earnings. Such FDs are marked ‘p/y’ in the
‘percentage change’ column. Likewise, their latest pay package may not be
comparable with the previous year’s if they joined part-way through that year.
As last year, our main tables are in descending order of earning power, but you
can easily look up your favourite company using the alphabetical index on page
32.

So what are our top findings?

– Head of the pay league for the fifth year is Peter Clarke of Man Group,
with an impressive £3,978,000, up almost 70% from last year’s table topping
performance thanks to a £3.6m bonus.

– FDs from Royal Bank (Fred Watt), Diageo (Nick Rose), Tesco (Andrew
Higginson), Barclays (Naguib Kheraj, who has just announced his intention to
leave the bank) and Reckitt Benckiser (Colin Day) have also made return
appearances to the top ten. Rio Tinto’s Guy Elliot is the highest new entry in
the millionaire’s club.

– There’s been quite a few job changes in the past year. In fact, around 19
FTSE-100 FDs have taken up their role since our last survey. One side effect of
this is to reduce the average time in post from more than five years to just 4.5
years. Oleg Novachuk of Kazakhmys is the youngest FTSE- 100 FD at just 34, and
is one of just three who are south of 40. In the FTSE-250 index, there are 24
FDs in their 30s.

– Our ever-popular high-flyers index – a slightly tongue-in-cheek exercise
that relates FTSE-100 pay packets to their age – reveals that Peter Clarke again
tops the table with almost £86,500 for each of his 46 years of age. Now that Ken
Hydon has retired from Vodafone, there is only one FD older than 50 whose pay
packet keeps up with the candles on his birthday cake.

– Last year women were, on average, better paid than men. But as we’ve now
lost BAA (and with it, Margaret Ewing) and Alison Reed (who left M&S for
Standard Life), some big hitters have left the index or not chalked up a
full-year’s earnings in their new post. The result is that women FDs – and there
are only 11 of them, down two from last year – now earn an average of £546,000,
a slight dip on last year’s £552,000.

Click
here to download a PDF of the survey.

BoardEx is an international board analysis and business development tool.
It covers more than 7,000 companies and over 125,000 directors and senior
managers across Europe and the United States.

Included are full biographies, personal networks and network paths
between individuals, board level committees, compensation data and a range of
experience measures. Individuals or boards are easily benchmarked across index,
sector or customised peer group.

The number of companies covered increases continually, ultimately to
include every significant organisation in the world.

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