M&S chief receives £1.4m bonus

The man credited with restoring the fortunes of Marks & Spencer has received a £1.358m bonus.

Luc Vandevelde, the company's chairman and chief executive, was given an extra £645,000 payment for his work this year.

And he was given £704,000 of the £816,000 bonus that he waived last year, when the company was still struggling to improve its performance.

In a statement M&S said that half of that figure "was conditional on his meeting this year's stretching financial targets".

All workers

Mr Vandevelde effectively staked his reputation on reviving M&S, promising to resign if the company had not turned the corner by May 2002.

On Tuesday, the company confirmed its recent revival when it unveiled a 30% rise in profits - beating most analysts' expectations.

M&S said a total of £60m has been awarded in bonuses to staff in the company.

And it said less than £3m of that total had gone to the board of directors.

Shop assistants

All of the company's 60,000 workers take part in the bonus scheme but any payments depend on their part of the business meeting financial and business targets.

M&S said some staff would get no bonus this year because they had not met their targets.

The company refused to give any details of the amounts being paid to shop assistants or any of its other workers.

The chairman of the remuneration committee, Dame Stella Rimington, said in a statement : "We are pleased to be able to make these awards.

Buying shares

"Credit for Marks & Spencer's turnaround goes to everyone in the business and they are benefiting from our success.

"We are now much more of a performance focused business and the bonus scheme reinforces the relationship between an employee's reward and the performance of the company."

Under his contract, Mr Vandevelde must invest half of his annual bonus in the company's shares.

On Thursday he bought 175,679 shares at 386.5p.