Yet mike Ashley paid out a record amount in bonuses to his staff at sports direct, an average £44k for a full time worker in one of the worst periods retail has ever gone through in this country.
That £44k bonus figure is misleading.
The details I'd found are:
The bonus is in two stages. The first bonus is 25% of base pay in shares of £1 per share. The first bonus target was underlying EBITDA of £155m in 2009-10 and was achieved in that Year. The first bonus will vest in 2012.
The second bonus is 75% of base pay in shares of £1.25 per share. The second stage of the bonus was conditional upon the first bonus target being met in 2009-10, attaining underlying EBITDA of £195 million in 2010-2011, and underlying EBITDA /Net Debt ratio of two or less at the end of 2010-11. All these targets were achieved in the Year.
The average salary at Sports Direct is £20,000.
So I might be wrong here but by my calculations the average bonus will be about £24,000 in shares over a period of 2 years. Which is a very tidy sum but nowhere near what was quoted in the press.
The post office did something like this afew years back and now the shares have matured, they are worth nothing