Lord Bamford and his wife Lady Carole Bamford are among the JCB directors who approved increasing their yearly award - David M. Benett/Getty Images for Positive Luxury
The billionaire Bamford family have received an £866m payout from their manufacturing company JCB despite a slump in sales.
The payout to Lord Bamford, the JCB chairman, and his family included £422m in cash and marks a 40pc increase on the previous year’s award.
Directors including Lord Bamford, his wife and Graeme Macdonald, JCB’s chief executive, approved the increase even though sales fell 10pc last year, wiping £120m from operating profit.
In its results, JCB warned the global market for construction and farm equipment shrank for the first time in years amid slumping European demand, with UK sales down by a quarter.
It said the outlook for 2025 was “moderately negative, with new geopolitical uncertainties, brought about largely through the protectionist trade policies of the new US administration”.
JCB last year announced plans to expand a new factory currently under construction in Texas to one million square feet and shift more production from Europe.
Nevertheless, the company will still be hit by the expanded scope of 25pc tariffs on steel, which the Trump administration revised in August to add 400 new product groups including machinery.
Mr MacDonald said then that the tariffs – revealed days after US vice-president JD Vance visited Lord Bamford’s country estate in the Cotswolds – were “hugely punitive” and would hit every machine shipped to the US.
JCB said the Chinese market had begun to rebound from a 70pc decline, while Brazil, Africa and the Middle East were also showing strong growth.
The firm, which has its HQ and main factory in Rocester in Staffordshire, close to where it was founded in 1945, said its balance sheet and net cash position also remained strong. It said the dividend also reflected a broad restructuring of its controlling interests.
More than 1,000 people were added to the workforce last year, though Lord Bamford rowed back on plans to create 500 more new jobs in January after Labour’s tax-raising Budget, citing “challenging market conditions”.
JCB remained a financial backer of the Conservatives, donating £30,000 to Conservative Central Office and £50,000 to Conservatives Together, as well as £272,500 to the Midlands Industrial Council – a group of wealthy businessmen who help fund the Tories, the filings show.
Lord Bamford, his family and their company are estimated to have donated more than £10m to the party over the past 20 years.
The Tory peer sits on the board of the Centre for Policy Studies, the think tank founded by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph, and hosted Boris Johnson’s wedding on his Cotswolds estate.
[SRC] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jcb-hands-billionaire-owners-866m-060000750.html
