Bellway bosses rake in £240k in bonuses despite protests

John Watson, chief executive, received a bonus of £104,391 on top of his salary of £515,000. The total, including pension, of £799,646 was down 3% on last year’s figure of £824,917, which included a £275,000 bonus.

The row was sparked when some shareholders became angry that performance targets for 2008 had been changed retrospectively to enable the payment of bonuses.

In this year’s annual report it said: “The committee has been very mindful of these concerns and undertook extensive consultations with institutional shareholders on future bonus arrangements in the spring of this year.”

As a result of the talks, Bellway reduced the maximum bonus figure from 120% to 100% of salary and based payments on fixed targets for operating profit (excluding writedowns), which comprises 40% of the bonus. The rest will be based on cash generation targets (40%) and personal performance (20%), which will be evaluated by the remuneration committee.

The payments are in contrast to Persimmon, Barratt and Redrow, none of which paid top bosses performance bonuses last year.