Shearer takes home £1m from SPG

Property developer Guy Shearer took home almost £1m in pay and dividends last year from his Shearer Property Group (SPG). Shearer, who owns 750 shares in the company, received a dividend of £1,044 per share and remuneration of £182,336. Fellow director Adam Markwell took home a £261,000 dividend and a share of the £308,400 that was split last year between the firm’s six directors. The remuneration packages were down on 2005 – when Shearer and Markwell shared dividends of £1.5m – despite increases in both turnover and profits. Recently filed accounts at Companies House for the 12 months ended 31 March 2006 show a 23% increase in turnover to £3.4m – up from £2.6m in 2005, and a 25% boost in pretax profits to £1.6m. SPG’s development properties, which include the 280,000 sq ft redevelopment of the Dickins & Jones on Regent Street, W1 – where Gap’s upscale clothing brand, Banana Republic, has recently confirmed it will open its first European store – provided £3.1m of turnover. The firm’s other development projects include a 450,000 sq ft shopping centre in Newbury, west Berkshire. The £120m Park Way mall, which SPG is developing in a jv with Standard Life, hit the headlines in October last year after a council blunder revealed that the developer had paid £7.5m in incentives to attract retailers to the scheme, including a sum of £4m to Debenhams for the department store to move a few hundred yards to take a 90,000 sq ft store within the shopping centre.