Soft landings
LORD King, British Airways' chairman, does not give his date of birth in Who's Who, but a lesser man might be thought to be nearing pensionable age. He has cer- tainly joined my list of chairmen and directors who at a mature stage of their careers receive large pay rises. His was rather over £200,000. I trust that a corres- pondingly higher pension goes with it, even if, as my pension specialist tells me, it would be likely to cost BA's pension fund million or more. Such figures, for the names on my list, are never disclosed. A different rule was applied to the Red Baron. This was Gordon Dunlop's nick- name when he ran Commercial Union, deriving from the CU's strafing of the stock markets. CU's forward strategy ran into casualties, and in 1977 he stood down for an older man, and collected £100,000. A few years later I was tickled to see the Red Baron joining forces with British Airways. Now he has stood down again, this time collecting £895,000, including £384,000 in respect of pension rights. Plainly this Red Baron, unlike poor Richthofen, comes equipped with a golden parachute.
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