STANDARD Life has had to pay more than £1 million in compensation to the company's former finance director who left her position after just 18 months in the job.
Alison Reed received a payoff of £1.14 million in an out-of-court settlement agreed with the insurer, according to figures in the firm's annual report.
Reed, who left her post in October 2006, indicated at the time of her departure that i
t was not her choice to leave the group, just months after she had helped to prepare it for a flotation.
The non-executive director of British Airways and the former group finance director of Marks & Spencer is also set to receive an annual bonus worth £134,482 for the first four months of 2007.
The payments, disclosed for the first time yesterday, were agreed in an out-of-court settlement after Reed launched a legal battle against the Edinburgh-based firm for compensation.
Standard also paid out almost £100,000 to Reed, right, in legal fees incurred during the dispute. She was understood to have been paid around £1m for the duration of her employment at Standard Life.
A spokesman for Standard Life said yesterday: "Her employment with the company came to an end in October 2006 but no agreement was reached with her at that time concerning the termination.
"Subsequently she made claims against the company and agreement on the settlement of those claims was reached in November 2007."
The annual report, sent out to 1.5 million shareholders yesterday, also reveals that Keith Skeoch, chief executive of Standard Life Investments, took home around £200,000 more than chief executive Sandy Crombie.
Skeoch's package came to £2.52m, while Crombie received £2.31m. Crombie's included £725,000 basic pay plus a £708,000 bonus. He is also set to pick up a £670,000 long-term incentive plan bonus for 2007.
Skeoch's pay package, made up of £350,000 basic pay, plus other benefits including £1.3m annual bonus and a long-term incentive plan bonus of £776,000, was 27per cent higher than his previous year's of £1.98m.
Crombie's pay was almost half the package handed to RBS head Sir Fred Goodwin, who made £4.2m in 2007, but pipped that of HBOS chief executive Andy Hornby, whose package came to just £1.9m.
Trevor Matthews, who left the company in February to go to rival Friends Provident, was paid just over £1m in 2007 and is also set to receive £475,000 as a share bonus payout in 2008.
Matthews is currently on six months "gardening leave" before he joins Friends.
His package was down on last year's figure of £1.29m due to a 2006 bonus of £320,000 which the company said was connected to his "recruitment arrangements".
Other pay packages included £945,000 for finance director David Nish, who filled Reed's post during 2007, and chairman Gerry Grimstone, who took home £203,000.
• Meanwhile, it has been revealed that Allister Langlands received a package worth £809,000 in his first year as chief executive of Aberdeen-based Wood Group, a 40 per cent increase on his final year as deputy.
Langlands, who became chief executive at the start of 2007 when Sir Ian Wood became executive chairman, earned a basic salary of £420,000, along with cash and deferred bonuses and payments in kind worth £389,000.
The Wood Group annual report, released yesterday, showed total remuneration to its UK executive directors rose 15.7 per cent to £3.17m, with the company claiming the market for UK oil executives remained "tight".
Non-executive directors, such as Scottish & Southern Energy chief executive Ian Marchant, received a basic fee of £34,000, but this increased to £40,000 from the start of 2008.
The full article contains 636 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
