Five get £1m-plus at Nationwide

The top five directors of Nationwide Building Society enjoyed tasty pay rises this year, ensuring all of them took home more than a million pounds.

The chief executive, Graham Beale, got the largest slice of the pie, with a £300,000 increase on the previous year to £2.25m.

That partly reflects a change in his pension arrangements that Nationwide says will save the society money in the long term.

Mr Beale, who has been chief executive since April 2007, got performance pay of £976,000 in a year when Nationwide's profits slumped from £317m to £203m.

In its defence Nationwide points out that customer satisfaction levels are high while customers complaints are low.

The finance director, Mark Rennison, saw his basic pay of £560,000 boosted to £1.34m by performance pay of £504,000 and a £161,000 pension allowance. The chairman, Geoffrey Howe, received £300,000.