Melrose trio cash in from £330m bonus pot windfall as stock price soars

Three former bosses at buyout specialist Melrose have shared in a bonus pot worth more than £330million – as revealed by the Mail on Sunday.

Co-founders Simon Peckham and Chris Miller and ex-finance director Geoffrey Martin were understood to have been the biggest winners when the 2020 incentive scheme paid out yesterday.

The vast share-based awards totalling £334million were triggered after a sharp rise in the value of the FTSE 100’s stock since the scheme was introduced four years ago.

Melrose was transformed by the controversial £8billion takeover in 2018 of engineer GKN, which was subsequently broken up and saw hundreds of jobs lost.

Peckham, Miller and Martin have all left over the past year.

They were expected to have received almost half the bonus bonanza with the rest divided among other Melrose executives.

The company said yesterday that it had paid a £157million total in cash to HMRC to meet tax liabilities arising from the bonus pot, with shares worth £177million given to the recipients. 

The 2020 scheme entitled Melrose’s top 21 directors and senior staff to shares worth 7.5 per cent of the market value over four years, a period over which it has more than doubled to £8billion.