Charities to benefit from Reckitt chief's pay

The boss of household goods giant Reckitt Benckiser made more than £90m in pay and shares last year after a decade of stellar stock market performance.

Bart Becht, chief executive of the Cillit Bang and Vanish group, exercised share options worth more than 70m and performance-based shares valued at around 13m in a bumper payout built up over his tenure at the helm. The stock bonanza came on top of a pay and bonus package worth nearly 5m in 2009.

But Mr Becht has decided to transfer nearly all of the stock options to a charitable trust, which supports organisations such as Save the Children and Medecins Sans Frontiers.

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A small proportion of the shares will be sold to cover costs, with Mr Becht donating three million out of his total 4.1 million in share options to the charitable trust – worth more than 110m.

FTSE 100-listed Reckitt has seen its shares outperform the wider Footsie by three-and-a-half times and have also beaten rivals – outperforming Procter & Gamble's shares by 225 per cent and L'Oreal's by 256 per cent.

The group's annual report this week revealed he was paid a basic salary last year of just under 1m and a bonus of 3.5m and other benefits, including a pension contribution of nearly 400,000.

He was also granted new share options worth more than 30m that he is entitled to in future years. Mr Becht, who is Dutch, became chief executive in 1999 when Reckitt & Colman merged with Benckiser.