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Three directors of Kingspan, the company that made the combustible insulation used in the Grenfell Tower, cashed more than £ 6 million in stock options before allegations against the company were released in the public inquiry into the disaster.
Gene Murtagh, the CEO of the Ireland-based company that made the Kooltherm-K15 foam boards used in the council block where a fire killed 72 people in 2017, took most of it, with a profit of £ 3 , 1 million, followed by Gilbert McCarthy. and Peter Wilson, two CEOs who earned 1.8 million pounds and 1.6 million pounds, respectively. The exchanges occurred in September and October, before the investigation began looking into the role of the company this month.
The options were tied to bonus schemes in 2008 and 2017 and allowed directors to buy shares for just 13 cents and sell them at the full share price, which at the time was more than € 76. Kingspan declined to comment on the reason for the exchanges, which were first reported by Inside Housing.
After the investigation began hearing evidence on November 5 that Kingspan and other companies had “introduced dangerous products to the market and sought to market them dishonestly,” Kingspan’s share price fell by approximately 12%.
The investigation was informed that Kingspan had recently withdrawn test reports used for several years to help sell its foam boards, which have been implemented to insulate hundreds of buildings. He confirmed that the version of the product he tested was not the same as the ones he had been selling.
Mourners and survivors said they were “outraged” by the stock transactions that emerged amid the investigation’s disclosures into the company’s conduct.
This week, a technical manager at Kingspan said that although the plastic-based insulating foam burned in tests, several of which failed, the company claimed it had limited combustibility and sold it for use in at least 240 towers in the United Kingdom. Ivor Meredith, who was also known to have “a serious drug habit” that affected his work, admitted that he was “involved in a deliberate and calculated deception by Kingspan” about the use of test results.
Kingspan has already admitted “deficiencies in the process during the period 2005-2014 for which he sincerely apologizes.” However, he stressed that he did not provide any specific advice on the suitability of K15 for use in the Grenfell Tower and that it should not have been specified. The product was used on a minority of the façade, with most of the insulation provided by rival manufacturer Celotex.
“These directors, to this day, still benefit from these dangerous products that should never have been on the market in the first place,” said Karim Mussilhy, a Grenfell United member whose uncle Hesham Rahman was killed in the fire. “£ 1.6 million, £ 1.8 million, £ 3.1 million – it’s outrageous.”
The news of the cash windfall for the company’s directors comes at the end of another week of evidence from the Grenfell investigation, which is currently investigating the manufacture, testing and sale of the plastic-based combustible materials used to reinstall the tower between 2014 and 2016.
Celotex established fire tests of its products to deliberately resist the spread of flames and give a misleading impression of safety, according to the investigation. It emerged on Thursday that a product manager for the company was so shocked by this that he wrote “WTF?” in the margin of a test report showing how fire resistant materials have been added.
After fire test failures, according to the investigation, Kingspan lobbied Meredith for test results showing the product was safe. “We were fighting for technology to pass, to justify our lie,” he said in a witness statement.
