Curbs looming as Gent faces rebels

A SHOWDOWN between Vodafone and its shareholders over chief executive Sir Chris Gent's latest pay package is being seen as a test case ahead of this week's White Paper on company law.

Shareholder groups, whose holdings have dropped to 20% of what they were worth 15 months ago, are deeply unhappy with Gent's deal.

This gives him a basic salary of £1.2 million, shares and bonuses worth £5.4 million and nine million share options next year.

They will vote on the package at Vodafone's annual meeting at the end of the month. They include powerful investor groups, such as the Association of British Insurers, the National Association of Pension Funds, and Pension and Investment Research Consultants.

The White Paper will seek to put more pressure on shareholders to keep greedy executives in line by voting at annual meetings on all executive pay proposals.

It will also demand that all quoted businesses post an annual report on the internet within four months of their year-end. The biggest 1,000 firms will also have to undertake an operating and financial review each year.

But companies will no longer be forced to hold annual meetings in the traditional sense. Instead, they will be encouraged to use modern ways of gathering shareholders' views such as e-mail and text messaging.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Trade and Industry

said: 'We want to give shareholders a greater opportunity to scrutinise companies and to encourage responsible business practice by improving transparency.'

The review will also look at regulation and the number of rules that companies have to deal with.