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London Stock Exchange Group shareholders have backed a proposal to double its chief executive’s salary to a possible maximum of £13.1m, making David Schwimmer one of the highest-paid bosses in the FTSE 100.
Almost 89 per cent of shareholders voted in favor of the plan, under which chief executive Schwimmer can earn incentive payments of up to 550 per cent of his £1.375 million salary and a 300 per cent bonus this year. His wage package was £6.25 million last year.
Schwimmer, who has led LSEG since 2018 after a 20-year career at Goldman Sachs, said earlier this year that UK companies They needed to pay their executives more to compete with American companies.
The approval of Schwimmer’s new pay deal marks the latest victory for UK companies looking to compete for talent with better-paid companies in the US, and makes Schwimmer one of the highest-paid chief executives in the FTSE 100.
AstraZeneca shareholders this month approved a bumper pay rise for CEO Pascal Soriot to 18.7 million pounds, justifying the move by saying the company’s main rivals are based in the United States.
LSEG has used similar reasoning. In its annual report, the company argued that it should be compared to large financial data providers such as U.S.-based S&P Global, and that higher salaries need to be paid to recruit and retain executives.
Before Schwimmer’s pay rise, one of his subordinates (the CEO of New York-based electronic bond trading platform Tradeweb) was paid almost twice as much as he was, a reflection of stark pay differences across the Atlantic. .
“We have also observed salary disparities when hiring US-based talent, with many candidates at higher salary levels than our CEO,” LSEG said in its annual report.
Shareholder adviser Glass Lewis had recommended that investors vote against Schwimmer’s new pay package, saying the large lump sum increase was not justified. “While the company has significant exposure to the US market, the CEO is currently based in the UK and, in the UK context, his available remuneration is already significant,” he said.
In recent years, LSEG has transitioned from being a stock operator to focusing on providing financial data to traders, asset managers and other industry professionals.
In the first three months of the year, LSEG’s revenue rose 7.3 percent to £2.1 billion, which was in line with analyst expectations. Revenue from LSEG’s data business rose 4.3 percent, while revenue from stock market activity rose just 1.6 percent amid a slow start to the year for listings.
Gross profits reached £1.9 billion, an increase of 7.6 percent compared to the same period last year.
Microsoft has a 4 percent stake in the group and they have been building new products together. LSEG said Thursday they would begin rolling out later this year, including a new directory of financial services professionals.
Revenue from its data business was “affected by Credit Suisse-related cancellations as expected”, LSEG said, as the collapsed bank abandoned its data subscriptions.