UK notions of acceptable avarice may have eluded departing Namal Nawana
It was “an honour” to become chief executive of Smith & Nephew, “a company I greatly admire”, gushed Namal Nawana when he got the job last year. What he failed to mention, it turns out, is that these warm feelings were dependent on the willingness of his new employer to whack up his pay at the first opportunity. Eighteen months later, Nawana has quit because a package of up to $7m (£5.4m) a year doesn’t meet his lofty expectations.
Technically, his departure is a “by mutual agreement” affair, but the language need not detain us long. Nawana seems to have looked at what bosses in charge of similarly-sized US healthcare companies can earn – around the $15m mark – and asked for the same. When the board said no, and pointed out that UK shareholders would never wear it, Nawana declared that maybe he wouldn’t hang around. Cue an inevitable invitation to pack his bags sharpish. One can call that outcome mutually agreed, but there’s no doubt about who instigated the quarrel.
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