Lord Myners fears his plans to reform the crisis-stricken Co-Operative Group fears his plan will be rejected next month unless the owners understand the serious need for a radical overhaul of the way it is run, the Guardian reports.
Lord Myners resigned from the Co-op board last Wednesday as opposition mounted against his initial proposal to scrap the current boardroom weighting to members in favour of sector specialisms that would more closely resemble the make-up of listed company boards.
The group is poised to report at least £2bn of losses on Thursday, after being delayed twice. In light of the likely losses anger has greeted the news that the boss of Co-operative Bank, Niall Booker, could earn up to £5.8m for just 18 months’ work.
Co-op Bank, which will need to raise another £400m in the coming weeks, said last week it would hold back deferred bonuses of up to £5m from former executives. Co-op retains a minority stake in the banking group following a recapitalisation in late 2013.
Mr Myners’ proposals are to be voted on at the annual meeting of Co-op’s owner-members next month, when he will step down as the only independent director on the board, which contains 20 members from the co-operative movement.
Investors to protect against fixed salary increase
Investors are planning to register a protest vote against UK banks including Barclays for boosting the fixed salaries of their top executives in response to the EU’s new bonus cap, the Financial Times reports.
Several big investors told the FT they expected a significant protest vote at this year’s shareholder meetings, which start this month. Some of them said they want banks to go further in shrinking their bonus schemes to offset the increased fixed pay.
Sellers raising property prices by 7% a month
According to the Guardian, sellers are attempting to cash in on a buoyant housing market by raising average asking prices in some London boroughs by more than 7 per cent in a month.
Property website Rightmove found that across the country average asking prices rose 2.6 per cent in April, and were 7.3 per cent higher than this time last year – the biggest annual rise since October 2007, before the credit crunch took hold.
Economic forecasters at Ernst & Young meanwhile have predicted house prices of 7 per cent nationally this year will be repeated in 2015, but “discounted fears of the housing market heading for a bubble”.
TSC to scrutinise taxman’s new powers
George Osborne’s plan to give the taxman new powers to clamp down on £10bn of tax evasion and avoidance is to face scrutiny from the Treasury Select Committee, “amid fears the move could hit civil liberties”, according to the Financial Times.
Andrew Tyrie, TSC chairman, said his members would take “further evidence on the extension of HM Revenue and Customs’ powers”, including moves to tackle offshore evasion and a right to dip into taxpayers’ bank accounts to recover unpaid tax.
