Murphy, a US citizen, who came in to run the business four years ago will leave by the end of the year with a £1 million-plus pay-off. That includes a year’s basic pay of £756,000, a pension contribution of £198,000 and perks largely made up of a so-called “expatriation allowance” of £210,000.
Lockwood, who was recruited directly by Cobham’s board led by chairman John Devaney, arrives on a basic salary of £690,000 and could quadruple that with annual and long-term bonuses if he were to spectacularly improve the company’s performance. Cobham said it would also buy out any outstanding share awards he had at Laird. At the end of 2015 these were worth around £3 million at the current Laird share price.
Cobham shares gained 6.8p to 169.4p, almost twice the deeply discounted rights issue price of 89p, while Laird shares fell 18.8p to 312.2p.
Analysts welcomed Lockwood, who has worked for BT, Marconi and BAE Systems, saying he had proved his ability to deliver complicated strategies at Laird.
Laird said its finance director Tony Quinlan, once of Drax, would take over from Lockwood as chief executive.
