Mitchells & Butlers pays out £200k to ex-directors

All Bar One operator Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) has shelled out £100,000 each to two former directors of the business.

Denis Jackson and Ray MacSharry were two of four M&B non-executive directors appointed to the group's board - and later removed - at the height of a battle for control of the pub group last year, which culminated in former Debenhams boss John Lovering becoming M&B's chairman.

The money paid to the two is to cover "legal and other costs", M&B said in its latest annual report.

The payout follows M&B's acknowledgment that the pair, along with fellow non-executive directors Richard McGuire and Douglas McMahon, had not acted against the interests of the company as a row over the ownership and strategic direction of the group rumbled on at the end of 2009 and into 2010.

M&B had gone to the Takeover Panel claiming some investors were acting in concert to assume control of the company, but the Panel found no evidence to back the claims and the pub operator was forced to issue a statement to the Stock Exchange in which it accepted it had been wrong to suggest this had been the case.

At the time it said it had made a payment "towards the personal costs and expenses of certain of these former directors".

MacSharry and Jackson, along with fellow directors Richard McGuire and Douglas McMahon, had been removed from M&B's board as the row escalated. The 'rebel' shareholders, represented by investment vehicles Piedmont and Elpida, won the day, forcing out then-chairman Simon Laffin and installing Lovering as the top man.

The payments to MacSharry and Jackson were revealed in M&B's annual report, which also said the total pay package in 2010 of the group's chief executive Adam Fowle almost doubled from £519,000 to £1.15m, a figure which included a performance-related bonus of £480,000.