You have to be either a brave soul or supremely confident – or Martyn Ratcliffe – to bet your remuneration on a troubled company’s share price. Since joining the RM board in June (see RM appoints Ratcliffe as Chairman), Ratcliffe has not taken a penny in compensation. The Board has now offered him options over 1m shares at 51p so long as he purchases 5 RM shares for every two under option by the end of November next year. And by the way, RM’s share price needs to exceed 100p for 20 consecutive days prior to the end of November 2015 for Ratcliffe to cash in.
Far be it from us to predict RM’s share price four years hence (indeed, we’d be writing future posts from the comfort of a warm cell at Wormwood Scrubs if we did). But we can observe that shares in Microgen, also reshaped and chaired by Ratcliffe, have seen their price more than treble over the past four years. Or look at Sagentia, the outsourced R&D venture, whose share price has more than doubled since Ratclifffe took the chair in April last year (see Record margins at Sagentia). RM’s investors will surely be hoping that Ratcliffe will be able to work his magic yet again.