Domecq boss in line for £15m from sale

ALLIED Domecq chief executive Philip Bowman stands to pocket at least £15.3m from the value of his shares and options in the company if it is sold for £7bn.

The Australian boss who pioneered the company's strategy of focusing on premium wines such as Mumm's champagne has built up a raft of share options and holds shares worth £3m. Company sources confirmed his options would 'crystallise' - become payable - as soon as the deal goes through. They would be worth about £12.3m.

His £15.3m payday is calculated at a conservative price of 650p a share but it could be far more if, as many analysts predict, news of the Pernod Ricard-Fortune Brands offer triggers a feeding frenzy among rival bidders. A spokesman said: 'His shares and options are worth a lot because of the value he has created for shareholders in the company.'

Paid £2.2m last year, Bowman, 52, recently faced a clash with shareholders over a performance-related shares plan that was seen as far too easy to achieve. He was today said to be holding out for at least 700p a share in the expected bid battle.

David Scotland, president of Domecq's wines division, owns shares worth almost £1m and options that are nearly £3m in the money while chief financial officer Graham Hetherington has £1m of shares and £3.1m of share option profits. Analysts say the move into higher-margin premium wines is likely to have triggered much of Pernod Ricard's interest in the business.

Meanwhile, as the dust settled on yesterday's announcement of deal talks, shareholders speculated about what would happen on the sidelines of the main transaction.

As well as being the world's second-biggest wines and spirits group, Allied has a sizeable and growing fast-food business that includes Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins ice cream - both omnipresent in north-eastern US cities. Talk was that Pernod and Fortune would look to sell the business on, possibly to venture capitalists, in order to pay back some of the debt from the takeover deal.

Domecq's stake in the Britvic soft drinks group, which it owns alongside Whitbread and InterContinental Hotels, is also waiting to be resolved. Britvic is earmarked for flotation, and any successful bidder for Allied would probably have to retain the stake in the joint venture.

Although an Australian, Bowman was educated at Westminster School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. Trained as an accountant at the then Price Waterhouse, he quickly moved up the corporate ladder with jobs including finance director at Bass and at Australian retailer Coles Myer. Among his hobbies listed in Who's Who is entomology, the study of insects.