Locked-in shares proposed for CEOs

OSLO • Norway's US$915 billion (S$1.3 trillion) wealth fund proposed to rein in long-term incentive packages for chief executive officers, saying a "substantial proportion" of pay should be provided in shares that are locked in for as long as 10 years.

Pay practices should be simple and not put undue strain on corporate governance, while allotted shares should not have performance conditions and "complex criteria", the world's largest sovereign wealth fund said in a report released yesterday.

BLOOMBERG

Takeover offers for Britain's Co-op Bank

LONDON • Britain's Co-operative Bank said yesterday it had received a number of non-binding offers that would go into the next phase of bidding, as the struggling lender seeks a takeover that would ward off the need for state intervention.

The bank, which put itself up for sale in February, said all offers involved some form of liability management, as the bank mulls over ways to reduce its debt and raise capital back to levels that would satisfy regulators.

Co-operative Group, which owns a fifth of Co-op Bank, on Thursday wrote down the value of that stake to nil, in a sign of uncertainty about the outcome of the sale process and the consequent difficulty of valuing the lender.

REUTERS