Pay

Telit: Warning Signs in the Remuneration Report

Today the CEO, Cats, has left Telit. Trust between shareholders and the company is fundamental. Cats lied to the company and the company failed to disclose relevant information to its shareholders. Cats was paid $3.37 million in 2016 made up of $1.63m salary and bonus of $1.74m. ShareSoc remuneration guidelines suggest £300k to £500k as a guideline for a company of this size c £250 million turnover. Cats owned 16 million shares and also has share options. So, such a large pay package ...
14th August 2017 Read more

Why Institutions Cannot Control Pay

An interesting recent article in the Financial Times FTfm supplement helped to explain why pay is so out of control in public companies. In an interview with Rakhi Kumar of State Street Global Advisors, she made it plain what the problem is. State Street may not be a household name in the UK, but they are one of the world’s largest fund managers. Fourth in size behind only Blackrock, Vanguard and UBS according to Wikipedia. Last year State Street had more than ...
10th August 2017 Read more

BP – Pay Cut or Downward Discretion

I seem to be spending a lot of time talking about pay at companies of late. It would be better if we could concentrate on more important matters, like their strategy, the lack of productivity in UK companies, how they are revising their plans to cope with Brexit and exchange rate changes, and all those other matters that affect shareholder returns. But it seems everyone wants to talk about pay. So here's the latest story. The BP Annual Report has been published ...
7th April 2017 Read more

Hard Hitting BEIS Report on Corporate Governance and Pay

The BEIS Commons Select Committee have today published a strongly worded report on Corporate Governance after its recent hearings on the subject. Here are some of the key points they make: They agree with the Prime Minister that high levels of executive pay need to be tackled "for the benefit of society as a whole". They forcefully recommend that Long Term Incentive Plans (LTIPs) should be abolished as soon as possible because they create perverse incentives and are often a way to ...
5th April 2017 Read more

Crest Nicholson Lose Pay Vote

Builder Crest Nicholson (CRST) lost the Remuneration Report vote at their AGM yesterday with 58% opposed (107 million votes against plus another 5 million withheld on a 74% turnout). This may be the first of a number in this year's AGM season. However they won the Remuneration Policy vote. The company expressed their disappointment on the advisory vote on the Remuneration Report and suggested it was profit before tax target for the 2017-19 LTIP. They reduced the target because they do not ...
24th March 2017 Read more

Pay Revolts and Rolls-Royce Voting Recommendations

According to a number of press reports we seem to be heading into the AGM season with another year of pay revolts. There are also rumours that Mrs May is to proceed with introducing annual pay votes. Chris Cummings, CEO of the Investment Association, writing for the Guardian said "Too many people still feel they are not sharing this country's prosperity. Companies can either act responsibly now and shape a more responsible 21st-century corporate Britain or they can carry on as before ...
22nd March 2017 Read more

Link Between Pay and Performance Is Negligible

A study commissioned and just published by the CFA Society gives a very good analysis of how the pay of public company directors bears little relationship to fundamental measures...
29th December 2016 Read more

Berkeley Group Interims, and Pay

House builder Berkeley Group issued their Interim Results this morning (2/12/2016). It was generally positive about the future so the share price has perked up somewhat today. But the...
2nd December 2016 Read more

ShareSoc Welcomes Corporate Governance Review

ShareSoc has issued the following Press Release: ShareSoc (the UK Individual Shareholders Society) welcomes the Government's announcement today of a review of Corporate Governance in both public and larger private companies. It is good to see that the Green Paper both discusses the problems of executive pay and the influence of stakeholders other than shareholders on businesses while setting out a number of options for further reform. As regards director pay, the document makes clear that despite more obligations on companies on ...
29th November 2016 Read more

Remuneration Campaign

ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight has been leading a campaign to reform remuneration in public companies - something that is now of interest to Prime Minister Theresa May it seems and other Members of Parliament. We have now set up a public page on our web site to cover what we have published in this area and activities to date. It is present here. There is also a dedicated "Forum" on the ShareSoc Members Network where Members can discuss this issue. Full members ...
29th October 2016 Read more