Investec halves Koseff's package

Investec has cut the pay of chief executive Stephen Koseff by half following talks with the Reserve Bank on "toning down" executive compensation. Koseff was paid £1.66 million (R21.4m), including a bonus of £1.25m, in the year to March, according to the Johannesburg- and London-listed bank's annual report published yesterday.

He was paid £3.3m, including a bonus of £2.9m, for the previous year.

"We met the remuneration committee of every bank last year," Errol Kruger, the registrar of banks, said in an interview yesterday. "They did get the message that we think it should be toned down a bit."

Investec, South Africa's fifth-largest bank by market value and the country's only bank with a London listing, reported a 25 percent drop in full-year profit to £292m in May. The company cut its dividend by 48 percent to 13p a share.

Total employee costs fell 6 percent last year, while the remuneration committee said the current year's bonuses for the bank's executive directors would be cut by 52 percent.

Those directors would not receive pay increases, while fees for non-executive directors would remain unchanged, it added.

Standard Bank, South Africa's biggest lender with a market value more than four times greater than Investec's, paid chief executive Jacko Maree a third less than Koseff. Maree received R14.1m in 2008.

Investec fell 32 percent in JSE trading in the 12 months through March. That was more than double the 15 percent decline in the bourse's five-member banks index. The shares rose 1.1 percent to close at R44 yesterday.

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