Alliance chief earns over £1.7m

Published on Monday 26 April 2010 22:28

KATHERINE Garrett-Cox, the chief executive of the Dundee-based Alliance Trust, has earned more than £1.7m in salary, pensions and share options, despite the firm she runs returning a lacklustre performance in the year to the end of January.

Her remuneration package makes Ms Garrett-Cox one of Scotland's highest-paid women. This list also includes Jann Brown, the finance director for oil and gas giant Cairn Energy, whose pay and share options just topped 1.8m in 2009.

Other top-paid female executives in Scotland include Lynne Peacock, the chief executive of National Australia Group Europe – owner of Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank. Last year, National Australia paid its top director, believed to be Ms Peacock, close to 1.7m.

Last year, Ms Garret-Cox was paid a salary of 629,382 and received pension contributions of 68,850. She also accepted share options worth just over 1m, although these will take three years to "vest" and are subject to the trust meeting certain performance targets.

Her basic pay was up almost 60,000 on the year before, although this reflected her taking on the chief executive's role half way through the year in August 2008 from Alan Harden.

Yet Alliance Trust performed poorly compared with other trusts last year, showing up in the lowest quartile of its peer group, ranking 34 out of a total of 43 in its sector.

Professor Sara Carter, head of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde Business School said: "Collectively, as a society we have to worry about the long-term influence of senior management remuneration, which is out of all proportion to the remuneration of lesser mortals.

"But when I see a woman earning that much money, I think, 'Good for you'."

A source close to Alliance Trust said: "Her pay is actually not that high compared with her peers on the FTSE100."