Support services group Hays has denied that it paid its former chief executive officer John Cole more than £1.3m after he left the group last year. Cole was named on a list of directors receiving substantial ‘golden handshakes’, along with another Hays director, Robert Morgan.

According to the company’s annual report, Cole received a basic salary of £379,000, £95,000 in performance pay and benefits and £42,215 from exercising share options, on top of a £800,000 pay-off. The figures show he took away a total of £1,316,308 following his resignation on 12 June.

However a company spokesman denied the figures in the annual report, claiming Cole had received ‘only’ £800,000 after his departure. The spokesman said: ‘It was just a contractual agreement and he was paid according to that. He got a payment of two years’ salary and that was it.’

Shares in Hays halved in value in the economic slowdown after Cole left, dropping from around £3.40 to £1.60 per share. Stock values dropped even further after 11 September, although prices have recovered since then.

Morgan’s pay off, which, according to the annual report totalled £331,000 including benefits and performance pay, brings the total cost between the two men to more than £1.6 million.

The revelations came after a survey on ‘golden goodbyes’, compiled from company annual reports by the union-funded Labour Research Department, exposed the large sums UK companies pay to directors as they resign.

Cole was 21st in the list and, if the figures in the annual report are correct, received a total pay-off worth more than three times as much as the one controversially awarded to Gerald Corbett, the former CEO of Railtrack.