Sarin is a Seller

Like most Vodafone workers I received a letter from the Halifax this week telling me that the 320 shares awarded to me in the 2005 “Allshares” scheme had sold for around £500. Not at all unwelcome!

Arun Sarin will have been even more pleased with the letter he received as 576,806 Vodafone shares (worth £865,209) matured in his employee share ownership scheme. As he isn’t too hard up at the moment he chose to sell only £350,000 worth, but that would be plenty to buy a house with, even at West Berkshire’s inflated prices!

This is just a drop in the ocean when put into context that Mr Sarin has around £11.5 million pounds worth of Vodafone shares available for disposal.

So there’s some pretty big numbers there but I haven’t finished yet. Vodafone’s annual report tells us that the total number of share options Arun currently holds is 28,281,629 shares worth a whopping 42 million quid!

Go Vodafone!

In the past Vodafone workers were granted annual share options of 50% of their annual salary (GEM shares) which matured after 3 years. This level of reward is now reserved only for executives. Workers on the ground are fobbed off with 5% EPP in cash and are told they’ve got a good deal. Connect members want a single share incentive programme that treats all Vodafone workers equally, not reserving the really juicy share incentive plans for the executive grades. Now that Connect is starting to establish collective bargaining units in Vodafone we are in a much stronger position to negotiate in these areas.

Go Connect!!!