Lloyd's chief doubled earnings at Sedgwick: Rowland's pay was boosted to pounds 750,000 as broker's profits slumped

DAVID ROWLAND, the new chairman of Lloyd's, nearly doubled his earnings to pounds 751,000 in his last year as chairman of Sedgwick, the insurance broker.

The big increase just before Mr Rowland's departure was because of a pounds 354,100 top-up to his salary paid by the company's long-term profit sharing scheme.

The doubled take-home pay came after a year when Sedgwick's pre-tax profits dropped 29 per cent to pounds 58m and earnings per share fell from 12.8p to 8.3p. The earnings of the highest- paid director also rose from pounds 300,000 to pounds 350,000 as group profits fell.

Mr Rowland retired from the broker in December to take charge of the loss-making insurance market, where his new salary is pounds 450,000.

According to Sedgwick's annual report, published yesterday, Mr Rowland's basic earnings in 1992 were pounds 397,151 in salary, profit-share and other benefits, pounds 14,000 higher than in 1991.

But the main boost for Mr Rowland was from 'long-term profit sharing', which a spokeswoman for Sedgwick said was a 'key man' incentive scheme introduced for certain staff in 1986. Bonuses were paid as an annual sum with the company retaining the same amount to be paid in later years. The payments reflected performance over several years.

Mr Rowland participated from the day he arrived in 1988 and was paid all the amount accrued at the date of his retirement, she added.

Sedgwick's report said a former director was paid pounds 205,000 from the long-term scheme last year and the accumulated amount in the scheme fell from pounds 2.1m to pounds 1.8m during the year. Further payments will be made from the scheme to directors in 1994, 1995 and 1996.

A ray of hope for Mr Rowland in his new job at Lloyd's came from a report by Standard & Poor's, the US credit rating agency, which said its statistical studies showed that the shake-out of Lloyd's syndicates was nearly over.

Only a few syndicates remained that had a greater than 25 per cent chance of going out of business in the next few years, according to an analysis that uses historic data to isolate the characteristics of failing syndicates.

The analysis of syndicates ranks them in three categories by financial strength. S&P ranked 223 syndicates expected to trade through the 1993 account and found only 19, or 9 per cent of the total, in the riskiest category.

Of the 69 in the weakest category for the 1989 underwriting year, S&P found 72 per cent had ceased to trade. Of syndicates ranked by S&P, more than 40 had not made it from 1992 to 1993.

Lloyd's confirmed yesterday that a large bond issue to raise cash was among the ideas put forward for its business plan, to be published in the second half of April. But a spokesman said it was one of a large number of proposals.

Suggestions that Lloyd's could raise pounds 1bn to pounds 2bn in the international bond markets have been aired several times recently, but there are practical difficulties. Lloyd's main assets are tied up in its premium funds, which could not be used as security for a loan since that would reduce claims-paying ability.

A bond might have to be secured on the market's cash flow at a time when the drain from past years' losses is mounting.

Lloyd's said it would appeal against a judgment by the Commercial Court on whether names would be allowed to withdraw funds paid under stop-loss policies, because it would result in disparity of treatment among names.

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