Inland Homes faces shareholder revolt

Brownfield property developer Inland Homes is facing criticism from shareholders over directors' bonus pay.

In the company's latest annual report, the company revealed that it is paying three members of its board a total of £226,000 in bonuses.

The Chief Executive, Stephen Wicks, is getting £115,000 (on top of a salary of £315,000), as is the Finance Director, Nishisth Malde, (salary £263,000) while the Land Director, Paul Brett is making do with a mere £15,000 (on top of an annual salary of £179,000).

Investors are particularly annoyed by the fact that there has been no explanation of why the bonuses are being paid. Moreover, the total bonus payments appear to be more than twice as big as the total maiden dividend payment to shareholders.

A maiden dividend of 0.067p a share was announced on October 4th, which with about 183m shares in issue would entail a payout totalling £122,000.

Well-known blogger and private investor Paul Scott has highlighted the issue on his blog, where he complained: "Remember that this is a small (£34m market cap) AIM-listed company that has only ever paid one derisory dividend, and where the share price has lost over 60% of its value since the company floated over five years ago. One has to ask the question, what planet are they on?!"

Sharecast attempted to do just that, but nobody at Inland Homes was available for comment.