Performance pay works both ways

Sir Christopher Gent, who can lay a fair claim to being the greatest British industrialist of his generation, may spend his day at Vodafone's annual general meeting in the pillory because of his latest award of options. Is it fair? Maybe not. Is it justified? Almost certainly. Gent has spent the bulk of his career at Vodafone, and as chief executive has transformed it from a division of a relatively obscure British electronics company called Racal into one of the world's biggest telecom companies, and briefly, before its share price started falling, into Britain's biggest company. He mi...