Tufan Erginbilgiç didn’t quite catch the bottom for Rolls-Royce’s share price when he joined as chief executive at the start of 2023, but he came close. The reference price for his £7.5m-worth of “golden hello” shares – the cost of extracting him from the world of private equity – was 91p. The engine-maker’s share price is now 732p, up 16% on Thursday’s ultra-bullish full-year report, meaning the value of Erginbilgiç’s signing-on package has inflated to a princely £60m. Not bad for two-and-a-bit years’ work.
He has to wait until 2027 and 2028 to collect the shares, but, unless a pandemic bigger than Covid lies around the corner, the risk of the paper gains evaporating before they become real looks negligible. The full-year numbers were streets ahead of what even City optimists had expected.
