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The Bae Systems chief is compliant for a total salary package this year to £ 13.9m under a new “Golden Cuffs” agreement, as the UK’s largest defense contractor became the latest FTSE 100 company that pushes for the highest rewards in its high ranks.
The proposed package for Charles Woodburn includes a potential stock price worth up to 9,5m under a new long -term stimulating scheme. The maximum payment would require a 50 percent increase in the company’s stock price, which has already increased 40 percent since the beginning of this year, and that it is still posting in 2030.
The BAE plan, described in the company’s annual report on Monday, comes in the midst of a push from several UK companies to provide higher rewards for their top executives after the London Stock Exchange Group and Nephew last year secured shareholders’ agreement to increase multimillion-kile wages.
The GSK drug manufacturer revealed last week that he had proposed the increasing salary of chief Emma Walmsley for as much as 21.6m per year.
Some corporate chiefs have reached what they consider to be the very restrictive approach of investors for the salary of the board of the board, especially for companies that have a large international presence.
Bae Systems has been one of the best performance shares in FTSE after investors accumulate in defense, bets that increase government spending will promote orders for the years to come. The group, which builds everything, from the submarine to Jets Typhoon Eurfighter, as well as rockets, last month reported a record order of £ 78bn.
Shares in the company increased 14 percent on Monday after European leaders met at the weekend to consider ways to strengthen their military skills between warnings from Donald Trump’s administration that the US will no longer pay for the region’s security.
Nicole Piasecki, the chairman of the BAe Prize Committee, wrote in the annual report that while current policy was only approved by shareholders in 2023, further changes were guaranteed given the most unsafe geopolitical environment and the risk of losing key leaders.
Bae, she said, had a great “leadership team” led by Woodburn, Finance Director Brad Greve and his US business president, Tom Arseneault, “and we are focused on keeping them.”
The company, she added, paid “local market rates in the countries where we operate, but this can create pay compression challenges for global mobile employees.”
While Bae “was not proposing a global movement for the SH.BA (or other country) salary levels, we will continue our access to pay properly for the local competitive market on which an employee is based,” she added.
Current long -term incentive opportunities for BAE UK executive directors had “fallen below the UK market needed to compete for talent, including some specific competitors in the UK that our employees actively seek.”
Woodburn, who has led Bae since 2017, received £ 11.7m in total reward last year, from £ 13.45m last year. Its long -term promotion is currently decreasing to 370 percent of the basic salary.
In the first year of new policy – assuming a 50 percent estimate in the share price and a maximum payment – Woodburn could receive just less than £ 13.9 million in total. Its minimum shares demand will increase from 300 percent of its base to 500 percent, in accordance with the new bonus conditions. Performance shares have a five-year dress period.
Changes in the long -term stimulating scheme are among some of the others proposed, including the removal of the current limit that “no role will have a greater salary than the chief executive”.
Cressida Hogg, the Bae chairman, said it was “important that our executive reward be comparable to the UK -based multinational peers in order to compete for high talent in an international market limited by our focus on engineering skills and demands of nationality.”
“The changes we are proposing to seek to keep and reward our old leaders for a longer term,” she added.
