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Pembroke: Keeping a jump ahead of Lilley

Nigel Cope
Wednesday 24 August 1994 23:02 BST
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PETER Lilley may have stamped on the City habit of paying bonuses in vintage claret and diamonds but he still has his work cut out to stop unusual rewards altogether. Croxtons, a consultancy that specialises in what it describes as 'National Insurance contribution mitigation business' was hot on the fax within hours of the rule changes with other, perfectly legal, methods of rewarding mega-buck City workers.

These include the GG Plan, which buys employees racehorses as benefits in kind. The employer buys the horse, assigns ownership to the employee who can either race the thing if he fancies himself as a minor Robert Sangster, or, more likely, ask the relevant trainer to sell it.

And there's more. In addition to voucher schemes and fancy life insurance policies, Croxtons' chairman, Michael Davey, says he did a deal yesterday with a manufacturing company that is paying bonuses to two directors in antique stamps.

NEWS arrives that Tiphook, the beleaguered containers business run by the permanantly tanned Robert Montague, is still having problems flogging the chairman's old motor. The generously salaried Mr Montague graciously traded all the way down from a powder blue Bentley to a top of the range pounds 50,000 Range Rover in February. But can the company shift it? Can it heck.

The six-year-old warhorse is still parked on a forecourt with 90,000 miles on the clock and a pounds 30,000 sticker on its window.

A FROZEN chip fight has erupted in Canada, where the family members who run the McCain oven-ready chips empire have fallen out over which of them should take over the business.

One group is making a second attempt to oust Wallace McCain as co-chief executive. He has countered with a proposal to take the dollars 3bn group public and replace the all-family board with a larger one including, shock horror, outsiders.

SAD to see that Major George Webb, who was thought to be the oldest chairman of a quoted company in Britain, has passed on to the great boardroom in the sky. Major Webb, who would have been 90 next month, was chairman of The Investment Company, a small investment trust in which he owned more than half the shares. Stephen Cockburn, a director who is at present trekking in Namibia, is likely to take the reins, ably assisted by Freda Wall, Major Webb's long-standing company secretary.

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