Andi Case worked for Braemar Seascope for 17 years before joining Clarkson (CKN) in 2006 to manage its shipbroking services. A couple of years later, he also became its chief executive. Since then, he and Jeff Woyda, who doubles as both the chief financial officer and the chief operating officer, have grown the company’s core business of shipbroking (the matching of cargoes to ships) and expanded it into a group with shipping-related data, analysis and finance subsidiaries. The number of employees has tripled – to more than 1,800 people who operate from 50 offices in 24 countries. In all that time, Case’s annual salary has been £550,000.
His total pay, though, is another matter. In 2021, he received a bonus of £4.7mn, plus shares worth £1.3mn from an award made in 2018. Not bad for a group that the market valued at about £1bn. That’s because Case and Woyda receive uncapped commission-type bonuses calculated from the group’s adjusted profits by a formula. This sort of unbridled pay is out of step with practice elsewhere, but their employment contracts were agreed years ago and neither wishes to vary them now. They’re entitled to have their bonuses all in cash, but they’ve agreed to a couple of concessions: a tenth of each bonus is deferred for four years and held as restricted shares, and they often throw part of their bonus back into the bonus pool to boost the pay of other employees.