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£1.25m 'golden hello' to lure Cadbury finance chief

Susie Mesure
Tuesday 12 April 2005 00:00 BST
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Cadbury Schweppes lured Ken Hanna to abandon the world of private equity to be its finance director with a "golden hello" of 225,000 free shares, the confectioner's annual report yesterday revealed.

Cadbury Schweppes lured Ken Hanna to abandon the world of private equity to be its finance director with a "golden hello" of 225,000 free shares, the confectioner's annual report yesterday revealed.

All Mr Hanna, who achieved notoriety by reversing the flow of FTSE 100 executive directors to more lucrative roles in privately owned companies, has to do to earn the restricted shares is remain at his post for five years. At yesterday's close, the package was worth £1.25m.

Mr Hanna, who is best known for leading the break-up of the pig breeding-to-pet food conglomerate Dalgety in the late Nineties, was paid a total of £1m last year. The figure excluded a boost from his free shares award, which will be handed over in three tranches of 75,000 shares from 2007 to 2009.

John Sunderland, the group's chairman, is to be paid £375,000 a year when he assumes the part-time role of non-executive chairman this August.

Mr Sunderland's basic salary was £900,000 last year, although benefits and bonuses boosted his total package to £1.7m, up from £1.4m the previous year.

As non-executive chairman he will still be provided with a car and driver, and office and secretarial support.

The report showed that Mr Sunderland, who has been at the company for 37 years, has amassed a total pension pot worth £13.8m - one of the biggest in the FTSE 100. The increase in his pension's transfer value last year was £2m.

A bumper year for Cadbury Schweppes, which hit all of the targets it set under a four-year turnaround programme, helped the total remuneration paid to Todd Stitzer, the chief executive, to break the £2m barrier. Mr Stitzer, who replaced Mr Sunderland as chief executive in 2003, earned a total of £2.15m, up from £1.4m the previous year.

His £673,000 base salary is set to soar once Mr Sunderland gives up his current executive duties, the report said.

The company said total remuneration for directors rocketed in 2004 because the 7 per cent rise in underlying profits before tax triggered close-to-maximum bonuses. Directors received 88 per cent of their base salaries under the company's annual incentive plan, up from 36 per cent in 2003.

Apart from Mr Sunderland and David Kappler, who retired as finance director last year, all the directors spent the proceeds of their incentive plan on buying more shares in the company.

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