Director pay cuts at Frenkel Topping
THE directors of Frenkel Topping, an adviser on the investment of personal injury damages, have agreed to take a pay cut in a move that will apparently “demonstrate their commitment to the long term future of the company”.
The combined salary sacrifice of £225,000 will be for the second half of the year, while the Manchester-headquatered company continues its transition to an advisory and investment management firm.
Meanwhile, its existing director incentive scheme is being replaced with performance linked share options.
The listed company will issue 1.5 million share options each to the three current executive directors; Julie Dean, Richard Fraser, and Jason Granite.
The share options will have an exercise price of 0.5p a share and there are performance conditions before the share options are able to vest.
Jason Granite, executive chairman, said: “The restructuring of our executive incentivisation packages is a key step forward in the development of the company, aligns directors’ interests firmly with that of shareholders and represents a significant saving for shareholders as we build value into the future.”
The company has also appointed a new commercial director – Mark Holt, who has been with the company for six years and has 20 years financial services experience.
Frenkel Topping has more than £700m assets under management, which it said had been achieved “despite the market volatility that followed Brexit”.
It continues to make solid progress in migrating existing clients onto its internal discretionary fund management platform, Frenkel Topping Investment Management, which it acquired last year as FC Fund Managers before the rebrand.
“Three months after launch, the client migration process is now gathering momentum and we continue to work towards our target of migrating approximately £350m of AUM (assets under management) by 31 December 2016,” it said in a stock market statement.
The company said both migration and the performance of assets under management were being helped by the strong performance of the six FTIM Safety First Funds it launched in April – funds created to achieve stable, above inflation gains with capital preservation and minimal volatility.
It reaffirmed previous statements that it is on track to double reported operating profitability between 2015 and 2017, resulting in an operating profit in 2017 of more than £3m and it expects operating profit for 2016 to be marginally ahead of the £1.5m made in 2015.
