A wry smile played around the corners of my well-chiselled features when I read Matthew Goodman's piece in The Sunday Times that Ali Parsadoust is to get a pay-off worth £400,000 from Circle, as well as £40,000 a year for his ongoing work as a non-executive director.

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Two thoughts, really.

First, paying a chief executive £400,000 a year for never making a profit explains why Circle are in the toilet, economically speaking. This deficit of both logic and common sense reminded me of the Obermatt's study for BBC More Or Less, which found that "pay packages designed to incentivise FTSE 100 chief executives had little effect on company performance".

Second, can you imagine what Ali would have earned if Circle had ever - in its eight years of existence - come close to turning a profit?

Nice work if you can get it.