Well the journalist is certainly taking the pith.
To arrive at that £10m figure, he has twisted the truth beyond all recognition.
To start with, he has valued £6.65m worth of share options as if they were cash. Depending on when the options were granted, and at what price, they could be worth anything between £sweet FA and £2-3 million.
Then he has lumped in the entire value of the man's pension pot, as if it was part of a payoff. Sure, the bloke is well paid (probably even over-paid) but that £3.6 million pension pot has been accumulated over several years - from the wording of the headline the journo makes it sound like its part of his golden handshake, which it clearly isn't.
The cash element of £635,000 is pretty juicy, but even that is a guess - the wording is "is expected to..." and presumably thats because thats what is in his contract? I expect my employers to honour my contract.
Finally, the conflation of retail gas prices with Phil Bentley's personal remuneration is a straightforward attempt to generate politics of envy, and make it sound like gas prices are only rising because of greedy fatcats like Bentley.
Rubbish journalism, and one of the reasons that I rarely buy a newspaper. I wonder if its the same journalist that wrote the "plumbers on £100k" article. Its just about as accurate.
I don't know whether Mr Bentley has provided good value to Centrica shareholders or not. Thats for them to decide. Unfortunately, with our current corporate governance arrangements, the smaller shareholders in particular probably won't have their voices heard.
