First Schroders, now Standard Life: it’s turning into a season of grand City institutions firing bullets into their own feet. Fresh from the calamitous handling of Michael Dobson’s elevation to the chair at Schroders, its Scottish-based peer is making an even bigger pig’s ear of a process it should be able to navigate in its sleep. For Standard Life to be scrambling around in an undignified 11th-hour effort to avert a pay revolt at next week’s AGM implies something has gone wrong in the boardroom. As the owner of arguably Britain’s most vocal stock market investor, a recommendation from ISS to oppose the company’s remuneration report is excruciatingly embarrassing. Guy Jubb, the retiring (but not shy) head of stewardship at Standard Life Investments, must wonder what to make of it. If a significant number of investors vote against the board next week, the usual platitudes about learning lessons and listening to shareholders will be particularly disingenuous. In effect, another group of fund managers are being compromised by the short-sightedness of their owner’s directors. As for Sir Gerry Grimstone, Standard Life’s chairman, the suggestion that he is preparing to make way for a successor after nine years is being strongly denied by company insiders. In reality, that moment cannot be too far away. And with the chairmanship of Barclays beckoning, possibly within the next year, Grimstone risks an unseemly and embarrassing pay row being his Standard Life legacy. Damon Buffini, David Harding, Johannes Huth, Lord Myners, Simon Robertson: the lists of EU referendum campaign donors resemble a who’s who of the City and finance. That’s not surprising: few people have the ready cash to be able to splurge the £7,500 required to guarantee themselves a mention in the Electoral Commission disclosures published this week. Wealthy or not, these donors have a right to be heard. Many are responsible for decisions about employment and investment, and have genuine concerns that an adverse outcome of the referendum could deter both. Mike Rake, the chairman of BT and writer of a £20,000 cheque to the In campaign, captured the mood when he argued that business has a “duty and an obligation” to speak out on a subject so critical to Britain’s future. The shrill calls of those – such as Iain Duncan Smith – who say the donations of big banks render the In camp’s economic perspective illegitimate are wrong. He failed to explain why investment banks are invalid sources of funding if hedge fund tycoons, the source of part of Leave’s war chest, are openly embraced? There’s a simple way of resolving this for future polls if they relate to issues of such national importance. State funding is rarely the right answer, but ending campaigns’ reliance on small clubs of ultra-wealthy individuals increasingly looks wise. You have to hand it to executives at ECI Partners, the mid-market buyout firm that recently bought the owner of the Applaws pet food brand. Word reaches me that bidders for MPM received an unusual demand as they negotiated their offers for the business: they had to sample the product in front of its founders. Only one of those who attended declined, citing an illness, according to (two-legged) sources. ECI bosses ploughed on, wolfing down the chicken and asparagus pouches usually intended for feline consumption. MPM describes its products as being fit for humans, but still. Who says City financiers lack the stomach for a fight?
Further to our note next week's AGM stating that Standard Life's new CEO, Keith Skeoch, has tried to head off a shareholder revolt over his pay by cutting £700,000 off his potential £3.5m bonus, it appears that this move has not been enough, and as the bank scrambles around in an undignified 11th-hour effort to avert a pay revolt at yesterday, analysts are suggesting that this implies that something has gone wrong in the boardroom. Skeoch has now called on other chief executives to follow his example by volunteering for lower bonuses.