St James’s Place defends payouts for top bosses, shares jump

St James’s Place rallied on Wednesday after the wealth manager defended a decision not to cut share awards for top bosses last year despite a drop in its share price.

At the annual general meeting in May, more than 20% of the company’s shareholders voted against its director remuneration report.

SJP noted on Wednesday that a minority of shareholders had said they felt the Committee should have applied a discretionary downward adjustment to the performance-based vesting outcome to account for the fall in the share price at the time of grant in 2020, and its effect on the number of shares granted.

"Also, they felt that the explanation provided in the remuneration report could have been enhanced to assist shareholders' assessment of the vesting outcome decided by the Committee," it said.

It continued: "The Committee had provided an explanation in the remuneration report of the reasons for not applying a downward adjustment, including that the Committee had already exercised discretion to award zero annual bonuses for 2020 and to hold the 2020 PSP (Performance Share Plan) grants at the same percentage of salary as in 2019 rather than the higher level approved in the 2020 Policy vote.

"Applying a reduction to the vesting outcome in addition to the restraint already referred to above, risked damaging the credibility of the PSP also bearing in mind that no reciprocal upward adjustment could have been made in a previous year when the share price had 'spiked' at the time of grant resulting in a reduced number of shares being awarded."

At 1515 GMT. the shares were up 6.8% at 705.33p.