If John McAdam and his team are to hit the bonus jackpot at Rentokil, then shareholders will also see a huge improvement in the value of their investments.

The company, once hugely popular with small investors because of its famed ability to grow earnings at 20 per cent a year, started stumbling in 2003 and has shown few signs of recovery despite two changes to management since Sir Clive Thompson, its talismanic chairman and chief executive, left in 2005.

So what will it take for Dr McAdam, Alan Brown and Andy Ransom to take home as much as £31.5 million each? If the share price reaches 180p, the level where each manager would pocket £13.5 million, the team would have created £2 billion in additional shareholder value. However, it has reached that level on only two occasions in the past three years.

A second reward of up to a further 3.75 million shares will be paid incrementally if the share prices rises above 180p and would be worth potentially £10.5 million if it reaches 280p. Should it make that level, £3 billion of additional value would have been created.

This team certainly has the credibility to improve Rentokil’s operational problems dramatically. Under Dr McAdam’s leadership, ICI became one of the most successful turnaround stories in recent corporate history but repeating this trick is a tall order.

Operational performance is clearly a problem. To this there is no quick fix. Indeed, it could take until next year at the earliest to resolve the problems at City Link alone and another vital issue Dr McAdam and his team will have to tackle is the desperately low morale among Rentokil’s 77,000 workforce.

Rentokil is an international business with a great brand name. Outsourcing businesses should thrive in times of economic turbulence but Dr McAdam’s crack team needs to give the company back its confidence. Only then, perhaps, will the bottom feeders leave it alone.

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