Former UK Coal chief gets £435,000 pay-off
UK Coal, Britain's only listed coal miner, rewarded its former boss with a £435,000 pay-off and its directors with bonuses totalling more than £200,000, despite what it called an "unacceptable" and "poor" performance last year.
New executive chairman Jonson Cox wrote in UK Coal's annual report, published today, that its pre-tax loss of £124.6 million last year - totting up to cumulative losses of £269.3 million since 2007 - were "three years of unacceptable performance in a row".
Yet it still gave mining director Gareth Williams a £113,077 bonus plus a £90,000 "relocation payment". Finance director David Brocksom got a £70,000 bonus while property manager Owen Michaelson pocketed £25,000. That's on top of salaries between £230,000 and £234,000.
UK Coal is also paying Cox - who got a golden handshake of almost £10 million when he left Anglian Water to take on the UK Coal job - £350,000 a year, plus a performance-dependent share award.
That means he could scoop up to another £1.5 million (at today's share price) in three years' time. UK Coal claimed that was a "bespoke share award... to reflect the nature of [his turnaround] role".
The miner said its £435,000 payment to Jon Lloyd, the chief executive who left in July, was a contractual entitlement.
