Funding Circle bosses purchase more company stock
Funding Circle chief executive Samir Desai and chief financial officer Oliver White have purchased £150,000 of stock each under the peer-to-peer business lender’s share incentive plan.
The share incentive plan was launched last year to give all staff a chance to own part of the London Stock Exchange-listed company.
Employees are able to purchase partnership shares using deductions from salary each month and receive one free matching share for each one purchased.
A stock market update this morning showed Desai and White each purchased 88 shares valued at 169p each.
It comes after Desai rejected a £190,000 pay rise that had been recommended by the firm’s remuneration committee last week.
In the business lender’s annual report for 2020, the committee recommended that Desai’s £210,000 base salary, which has remained unchanged since 2017, is increased to £400,000.
The committee said this is needed “to address some of the gap to market, bring the ratio of salary to other compensation more into line with market practice and to begin to reflect the size and complexity of Funding Circle’s operations.”
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However, Desai, who is one of three co-founders of Funding Circle, said he wanted no change to his current £210,000 base salary in the “current economic and societal climate”, according to the report.
While Desai’s base salary has not risen since 2017, he has benefitted substantially from Funding Circle’s stock market flotation in 2018.
He took home £4.081m in the year that the company went public, most of which came from cashing in share options, according to the 2018 annual report.
Desai’s rejection of a base salary increase means that White, who joined the platform in June last year, was on the highest base salary of £400,000.
Funding Circle’s share price opened at 164.98p this morning.