Gent turns to drugs

Sir Christopher Gent, the man who powered Vodafone into the top league of global companies, has come out of retirement to become deputy non-executive chairman of drug company GSK (GlaxoSmithKline).

At the rich but troubled drug company, Gent will join five other knights on the board. Next 1 January, he will take over from the other Sir Christopher (Hogg) as non-executive chairman.

He will find himself in familiar territory. The GSK board has been through two years of battles over fat-cattery with its shareholders – mainly over the remuneration package of Philadelphia-based CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier. This included a £22m golden parachute with pay and options to fit.

The board and Garnier are understood to have settled for a pharmaceutical industry median of about £5.5m a year. In his last year at Vodafone, Gent took home around £9m, including a basic pay of £1.27m, annual bonus in shares of £1.59m, £3.34m worth of long-term incentive shares and an eye-watering £3.26m tossed into his pension pot.

Gent therefore got hammered in the then-fashionable outcry about fat cats, although he had his defenders who pointed out how far he had taken the company.

To show that he's not in it just for the money, Gent is to be paid £500,000-a-year when he takes over at GSK, 20 per cent of this in shares. Hogg took home £374,000 this year.

The global drug industry is judged to be ripe for consolidation. GSK has no world-beating drugs on the immediate horizon and is under pressure from generic drug makers. Gent drove Vodafone from being a player in the UK mobile market to being a top global company through a string of acquisitions.

Gent was also heavily tipped by a wistful Marks & Sparks board as the solution to the ailing retailer's problems. Whether he will be able to indulge in his appetite for deals in his new job remains to be seen.