The boss of Future (FUTR), the publisher behind Classic Rock and Total Film, is in line for a payday of nearly £18 million after overseeing a twenty-fold surge in its share price over the past five years. Zillah Byng-Thorne, chief executive of Future, is expected to receive 1.24 million shares from a long-term incentive scheme after hitting all her performance targets. The award, worth £17.5 million at last week’s close, could vest as soon as today. The payout for Ms Thorne, 45, could stoke tensions with shareholders. She took home £4.78 million in the 12 months to the end of September last year, including a £1.45 million long-term share bonus.
Labour has accused two of Britain’s biggest energy operators of “prolonging the rip-off” of consumers after they shifted their ownership offshore in order to complicate the party’s promise to renationalise them. National Grid (NG.) and SSE (SSE) confirmed yesterday that they had created new companies for the parts of their businesses deemed vulnerable to a Labour seizure and had registered them in jurisdictions in Switzerland, Luxembourg or Hong Kong. Both companies said that they had moved to protect the interests of their owners, which include smaller investors and local authority pension funds, with Labour committed to buying back the assets at a discount to their present value.
Dignity (DTY), one of Britain’s biggest funeral providers, has complained to the advertising regulator after a comparison website published its nationwide prices online. Dignity has claimed that the prices on the website of Beyond, formerly called Funeralbooker, are misleading and “denigrate” Dignity’s service, adding that comments left on the page “misleadingly implied they had been written by members of the public”. The Advertising Standards Authority said that it would publish its decision “in due course”. Concerns about the cost of funerals have prompted an investigation into the industry by the Competition and Markets Authority. The Treasury also has been examining the pre-paid funeral market and it said in June that it planned to introduce statutory regulation of pre-arranged funerals.
