Taylor Wimpey plans to give boss Pete Redfern £400,000 discount on luxury flat. Deal on £2m London property criticised as ‘gratuitous bonus’ for one of UK’s best-paid executives. Taylor Wimpey (TW.), one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders, is planning to give its chief executive Pete Redfern a £436,000 discount from the original asking price on a luxury apartment it built in the centre of London. The company had originally set the price of the flat, which is in a block affording views across the Thames to the Houses of Parliament, at £2.48 million. It is proposing to sell it to Mr Redfern for £2.04 million. Campaigners expressed unease about the perk, which comes after a row over the £75 million bonus paid to another housebuilding chief, Jeff Fairburn at Persimmon, which was only defused with his forced departure last November.
Adviser Pirc stays neutral over Edward Bramson’s Barclays move. Barclays (BARC) has suffered a setback in its battle to keep the activist investor Edward Bramson off its board after an influential shareholder advice service said that his campaign had merit. Pirc, which advises pension funds and other investors, has stopped short of recommending that shareholders back Mr Bramson’s attempt to join Barclays’ board. But it has abstained on the matter and said Mr Bramson, whose investment fund Sherborne owns 5.5% of the bank, may be worth electing at next year’s annual general meeting. Its position contrasts with that of two other advisory services, ISS and Glass Lewis, which have come out for Barclays in the past week, saying Mr Bramson’s resolution should be voted down.
Customs union will sell British cities short, says Centre for Cities think tank. Cities including Brighton, Cardiff and Edinburgh as well as London would be hit hard by a Brexit deal that neglects Britain’s powerhouse services sector, according to research. Failure to preserve frictionless access to the European Union for leading service industries would risk a sharp fall in trade, posing a threat to jobs across dozens of urban areas, the economic think tank Centre for Cities warned. Its analysis found that British cities export services worth £78 billion each year, such as insurance and legal advice, to EU countries. A third of all exports from Edinburgh, Brighton, Cambridge, Cardiff and London are generated by companies selling services to the bloc.
Saudis buy Shell stake in refinery. Saudi Arabia’s state oil group has agreed to pay almost £500 million to Royal Dutch Shell ‘B’ (RDSB) to buy it out of an oil refinery joint venture on the Gulf. Saudi Aramco will buy Shell’s 50% stake in the plant, ending a 30-year joint venture, as it expands its refining and petrochemical operations in a drive to become the world’s largest energy company. Saudi Aramco is the world’s biggest oil company, pumping more than 10 million barrels per day last year. The acquisition, for $631 million, is due to complete later this year. The disposal by Shell is part of a move by the Anglo-Dutch group to shift its focus from oil to lower-carbon products such as natural gas. It has sold more than $30 billion of assets in the past three years to simplify its portfolio.
Chinese conglomerate raises stake in Thomas Cook Group (TCG). The Chinese conglomerate that has been tipped as a bidder for part of Thomas Cook has raised its stake in the holiday business and now owns almost a fifth of the British company. Fosun, which was co-founded by the Chinese billionaire Guo Guangchang, has been increasing its shareholding in Thomas Cook since the start of the year and has a stake of just over 17% worth about £64 million. It means that Fosun has overtaken the fund manager Invesco to become the biggest shareholder in the group. Thomas Cook is the world’s oldest tour operator, tracing its roots back 178 years when its eponymous founder organised a rail trip from Leicester to Loughborough for temperance supporters. It carries 22 million holidaymakers each year.
