Post by Teddy Bear on Jun 14, 2012 14:48:16 GMT
An opinion piece in the Telegraph today that most independent thinkers (no reference to the newspaper of that name) will yell a resounding yes. As it is, nothing is likely to change.
Isn’t it time for a shareholder revolt at the BBC?
By David Hughes
The BBC - paying people too much
Shareholder power is growing by the week. The latest victim is Sir Martin Sorrell, boss of the world’s biggest advertising agency WPP. At the company’s annual meeting in Dublin yesterday almost 60 per cent of the shareholders gave the thumbs down to the board’s remuneration package, which included a thumping 60 per cent pay rise for Sorrell himself. They did so even though the firm is making big profits – though its share price has fallen. The WPP vote is simply the most dramatic recent demonstration of a growing phenomenon. Big investors have had a bellyful of executives enjoying unjustifiably big rewards, particularly at a time of economic austerity.
Isn’t it time that shareholders in the BBC – that means all of us – took a similar stand? Blissfully unaffected by the economic turmoil out there in the real world, it pockets a fixed annual income of £3.6 billion. It doesn’t have to struggle to make money, only to spend it. And it loves to splash it around. While it is notoriously difficult to get any hard info out of the Beeb on the salaries it pays – commercial sensitivity and all that – there’s enough in the public domain to have the hard-pressed licence fee payer reaching for their pitchforks.
Last year the Corporation revealed it was paying £22 million to just 19 of its “stars”, all of them earning more than half a million a year. That included a reported £2 million for Graham Norton and Gary Lineker (why?) and £1.4 million to Alan Hansen (an even bigger why?). Is Anne Robinson worth £1 million a year and Jeremy Paxman £800,000? Most licence fee payers will have a view, but unlike shareholders in a company they have no way of expressing it. Surely it’s time they did.
By David Hughes
The BBC - paying people too much
Shareholder power is growing by the week. The latest victim is Sir Martin Sorrell, boss of the world’s biggest advertising agency WPP. At the company’s annual meeting in Dublin yesterday almost 60 per cent of the shareholders gave the thumbs down to the board’s remuneration package, which included a thumping 60 per cent pay rise for Sorrell himself. They did so even though the firm is making big profits – though its share price has fallen. The WPP vote is simply the most dramatic recent demonstration of a growing phenomenon. Big investors have had a bellyful of executives enjoying unjustifiably big rewards, particularly at a time of economic austerity.
Isn’t it time that shareholders in the BBC – that means all of us – took a similar stand? Blissfully unaffected by the economic turmoil out there in the real world, it pockets a fixed annual income of £3.6 billion. It doesn’t have to struggle to make money, only to spend it. And it loves to splash it around. While it is notoriously difficult to get any hard info out of the Beeb on the salaries it pays – commercial sensitivity and all that – there’s enough in the public domain to have the hard-pressed licence fee payer reaching for their pitchforks.
Last year the Corporation revealed it was paying £22 million to just 19 of its “stars”, all of them earning more than half a million a year. That included a reported £2 million for Graham Norton and Gary Lineker (why?) and £1.4 million to Alan Hansen (an even bigger why?). Is Anne Robinson worth £1 million a year and Jeremy Paxman £800,000? Most licence fee payers will have a view, but unlike shareholders in a company they have no way of expressing it. Surely it’s time they did.
