Slough Estates director received pounds 429,000 pay-off

SLOUGH ESTATES, the property company that has just asked its shareholders for pounds 147m, paid its vice-chairman pounds 429,000 to leave the company last year.

Graeme Elliot was heavily involved in the expansion strategy pursued by the group through most of the 1980s. When he was made redundant last March, Sir Nigel Mobbs, Slough's chairman, said that role no longer existed.

The pounds 429,000 compensation includes additional pension contributions and compares with Mr Elliot's annual salary of about pounds 180,000.

Slough's accounts, published yesterday, also revealed that Sir Nigel took a pounds 2,000 cut in salary to pounds 262,000. Profits for the year, before exceptional items, rose slightly from pounds 68.3m to pounds 69.1m. Sir Nigel attracted criticism in 1991 when his salary rose pounds 11,000 to pounds 264,000 despite a drop in pre-exceptional profits from pounds 86.4m to pounds 68.3m.

The highest-paid director of Redland, the brick manufacturer - believed to be Robert Napier, chief executive - enjoyed a 16 per cent pay rise to pounds 299,354. The chairman, Colin Corness, suffered a drop in salary from pounds 179,016 to pounds 107,751 as his role became non-executive.

Redlands' pre-tax profits rose from pounds 186m to pounds 221.5m, largely because of the acquisition of Steetley, the rival brick maker.

Cecil Buckett, who resigned last April as finance director of Newman Tonks, the architectural fittings group, was paid pounds 200,000 compensation.