Yahoo Finance Balfour Beatty suffers revolt over executive pay
Balfour Beatty’s investors have expressed their unhappiness at the pay awarded to the company’s bosses as almost 14pc of shareholders refused to back the latest remuneration report.
Chief executive Leo Quinn was paid almost £5.4m in 2017 after his long-term incentives, worth more than £2m, kicked in.
Finance director Philip Harrison was paid £1.9m, which included £752,000 of long-term incentive payments, while chairman Philip Aiken received £270,000.
At the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday, 13.63pc of investors voted against the payments, although the motion still had enough votes in favour to be passed.
More than 10pc of shareholders also voted against Mr Aiken’s re-election.
This is the second year that some of Balfour Beatty’s investors have been displeased about the way that the company rewards its top team.
Last year, almost 23pc of shareholders rebelled at the annual general meeting over plans to increase Mr Quinn’s annual bonus from 120pc of his salary to 150pc.
Mr Quinn has overseen a turnaround of the business since taking the helm in 2015. In March, Balfour Beatty reported that its pre-tax profits had jumped to £117m in 2017, up from just £10m a year earlier.
It had run into trouble after underbidding on a number of large contracts, accepting thin margins in order to win work. As a result, its costs spiralled out of control.
Mr Quinn instigated a review called "Build to Last", which aimed to streamline the company’s processes and make sure it was only bidding on viable contracts.
Balfour is not the only company to have faced shareholder ire this year over excessive pay: earlier this week, Bovis Homes suffered a sizable revolt when 37.6pc of its investors voted against its pay report.
Fellow housebuilder Persimmon, the drugmaker AstraZeneca and the consumer giant Unilever have also faced votes against their pay policies.
