Housebuilder scrapes past shareholder protest over chief executive’s £75m bonus

Persimmon wants to “draw a line” under the bonus scandal that awarded chief executive Jeff Fairburn £110m after it scraped through a shareholder vote.

At the York housebuilder’s annual general meeting, 51.5% approved the remuneration report – although nearly one-third of votes were withheld.

Jeff Fairburn, Group CEO, Persimmon

That was despite Fairburn already agreeing to reduce his reward to £75m.

However Euan Stirling, global head of stewardship at Aberdeen Standard Investments, told Persimmon’s AGM this voluntary reduction “does not even get close to acceptable”.

Persimmon’s chairman Nicholas Wrigley and the chair of its remuneration committee, Jonathan Davie, had previously resigned over the payouts, which resulted from a 2012 long term incentive plan.

In a statement after the vote, Persimmon defended the bonus scheme and pointed to the 85% approval by shareholders in 2012 although acknowledged that “a sizeable number of shareholders remained concerned over the level of remuneration that ultimately resulted from the vesting of these 2012 awards”.

It added: “Total shareholder returns to date from the launch of the group’s new strategy in 2012 now exceed 500%, placing us at number 2 in the FTSE 100 and we have delivered more than £8bn to shareholders in that period.”

All of Persimmon’s directors have waived increases to their 2018 salaries while its executive directors have also waived any bonus for this year.

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