HSBC's big two make 'personal gift' of £1.3m in shares to charity

BANKING giant HSBC's top two bosses have given away shares worth more than £1.3 million to charity.

Chairman Stephen Green has donated 124,979 shares worth nearly 850,000 to the Bishop Radford Trust, a Christian charity of which both he and his wife are trustees.

Chief executive Mike Geoghegan is giving away 74,000 shares worth 500,000 to three charities, including Education Africa, for which his wife is a global ambassador.

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The giveaways follow the vesting of shares under a long-term incentive scheme based on HSBC's performance between 2007 and 2009.

Green, an ordained minister, has given away all of his awarded shares after tax, while Geoghegan has donated one-third of the 223,000 shares he received under the scheme.

At HSBC's annual results last month, Geoghegan announced a 4m handout for several charities around the world rather than sacrificing his bonus. as many other bank bosses did.

A spokesman for the bank said: "This is a personal gift by the group chairman and the chief executive, so it would not be appropriate for the bank to comment."

Both gifts have been put in the shade, however, by the generosity of Bart Becht, chief executive of Vanish household goods giant Reckitt Benckiser.

It emerged this week that Becht is donating three million share options worth more than 110m to a charitable trust, which supports organisations such as Save the Children and Mdecins Sans Frontires.

Reckitt's annual report showed Becht made more than 90m in pay and shares last year, after a decade of stellar stock market performance.

He exercised share options worth more than 70m and performance-based shares valued at about 13m in a bumper pay-out built up over his tenure.

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His basic salary last year was just under 1m, with a 3.5m bonus.

Becht, who is Dutch, became chief executive in 1999 when Reckitt & Colman merged with Benckiser. The company's shares have outperformed the wider Footsie by three and a half times and beaten rivals' stock – they outperformed Procter & Gamble's shares by 225 per cent and L'Oreal's by 256 per cent.

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