City & Business: Incomplete disclosure
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Your support makes all the difference.A POSTSCRIPT to my column of 22 May, in which I berated Portals for failing to disclose to shareholders that its magnificent Georgian pile, Laverstoke House in Hampshire, was occupied by the chairman Julian Sheffield. This may or may not be a wise use of company money, I then argued, but shareholders should at least be informed.
Portals, which manufactures paper for banknotes and tea-bags, has now come partially clean, admitting that Mr Sheffield lives in the main part of the house rent- free, and enjoys two acres of garden, though not the rest of the 4,000-acre estate, nor the trout fishing on the River Test. The perk is taken into account when deciding his total remuneration package. He gets a pounds 124,000 salary as well. He is to vacate the house by August 1996.
Not before time, the company plans to alert shareholders to the arrangement in next year's annual report. However, it declines to put a value on it, claiming it would be 'very difficult' to do so.
This is high-octane fudge. Independent chartered surveyors have managed to put a value on the whole estate - pounds 3.25m at the last count. And the company rents out at 'market prices' five other homes on the estate. If surveyors can value these, they can put a price on Mr Sheffield's salons. Anyway, he must have divulged his living arrangements as a taxable benefit in his return to the Revenue. If the taxman can be told, so can Portals shareholders.
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