Whitbread staff share £6m windfall

Staff at Costa Coffee or Premier Inn who five years ago decided to invest £250 a month in the share save scheme of their parent company, Whitbread, are now sitting on a profit of around £69,000.

Around 1,100 staff at Whitbread, which also owns restaurant chains such as Beefeater Grill, have collectively made more than £6m in profit after two share schemes matured on Monday.

The option price for the five-year scheme was set at £7.28 but the Whitbread’s shares have since rocketed in value - they started trading at £37.51 on Monday before falling 37 to close at £37.14.

Staff who invested the maximum of £250 a month in a three-year scheme, where the option price was set at £14.14, will have made a profit of around £15,000.

Chancellor George Osborne recently raised the maximum staff are allowed to invest under such schemes from £250 to £500 to encourage more employee ownership of companies.

Chris Thompson, who manages a Costa coffee store at a branch of Tesco Home Plus in Chester, saved £250 under the five year scheme and is now looking at a profit of around £69,000 on top of his original investment, which amounted to £15,000.

“This is potentially a life changing sum of money for me,” he said. “I’m not planning on selling all the shares straight away as I want to benefit from the dividend and also any further increases in the share price, but I am planning on selling some to help pay for a family trip to New Zealand.”

Whitbread chief executive, Andy Harrison, said: “I’m really delighted for those Whitbread team members who stand to make a significant profit on the back of a sharp rise in our share price over the past few years.”