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The three top bosses at housebuilder Persimmon (LON: PSN) earned a combined £104 million last year.
Backlash in February led to the group to slash bonus payouts to the top three executives by over £50 million. However, the FTSE 100 company’s annual report showed that the first round of bonuses was unaffected.
Jeff Fairburn, the chief executive, earned £47.1 million in 2017, which is a £2.1 million increase from 2016. Dave Jenkinson, the managing director, was paid £20.4 million and Mike Killoran, the finance director, received £36.7 million.
After the group was criticized for its controversial pay plan, the housing group agreed to cut bonus payments for the top three executives by £51 million, with Fairburn also receiving a £25 million pay cut.
“It is clear that the absence of a cap … has given rise to the potential for payouts which, when triggered in full, will be significantly larger and paid earlier than might reasonably have been expected at the time the scheme was originally put to shareholders,” said a Persimmon spokesperson.
Fairburn said that he made the private decision to give a portion of his bonus to charities.
“It’s now clear that this belief was misplaced and so I am making my plans public and recognise that I should have done so sooner. I am setting up a private charitable trust which I plan to use to benefit wider society over a sustained period of time by supporting, in a very meaningful way, my chosen charities,” he said.
“I would like to make it clear that I did not seek these levels of award nor do I consider it right to keep them entirely for myself. Once it became apparent that our outperformance would lead to a very significant award for me, I made plans to use a substantial proportion of the total to support the charities that are particularly important to me and my family.”
Under a new scheme, the three executives at Persimmon will now have payouts capped at £29 a share.