Standard Chartered gifts Bill Winters £6m golden hello

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Standard Chartered is clearly pinning its hopes on knight in shining armour Bill Winters, gifting its new chief executive more than £6m in shares.

The golden hello of just over 899,000 shares is being paid as compensation for "the value of share interests" in Renshaw Bay, the hedge fund he founded after leaving JP Morgan Chase in 2009. On top of this Winters also received 59,035 shares in the form of a fixed pay allowance. 

Winters also receives a £1.15m annual salary. 

Shares in the troubled bank, which Winters was parachuted in to turn around back in May, have tumbled over the last year, and are around 670p today. 

Asia specialist StanChart has been struggling against a backdrop of the slowdown in emerging markets. 

But Winters appears to be earning his keep, having already introduced a swathe of reforms including simplifying its organisational structure to "improve accountability, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy and play a key part in delivering the previously announced $1.8bn (£1.2bn) of cost savings by the end of 2017". 

"The group needs to kick-start performance, reduce its cost base and bureaucracy, improve accountability, and speed up decision making," Winters said at the time.
 
"The new structure will help achieve all of these critical objectives and will be in place as we communicate a comprehensive plan to address the group's performance by the year end."
 
But, just in case you've forgotten, Winters is a man of many talents, not least his singing prowess…