AGL investors snub ex-MD's pay package
Shareholders in AGL Energy Ltd, Australia's biggest electricity and gas retailer, rejected the pay package of former managing director Paul Anthony, who was fired last month after a cut in a two-month-old profit forecast.
About 62 percent of shareholder votes were cast against the company's remuneration report, Sydney-based AGL said yesterday in a statement issued to the Australian Stock Exchange.
Anthony's compensation, estimated at nearly A$17 million ($16 million) over 18 months by the Australian Shareholders' Association, won't be cut because it has already been paid, Chairman Mark Johnson said.
The cut of as much as 18 percent in AGL's profit forecast for the year ending June 30, 2008, triggered the biggest drop in the share price for 20 years on October 15. Anthony's payment was included in a remuneration report voted on at yesterday's annual meeting, where some shareholders called for Johnson to step down.
"I would have expected the remuneration report to be defeated," Johnson told reporters after the meeting.
"I have talked to a number of the major institutions and they told me they were going to vote against it, primarily because of their concern with the quantum of Paul Anthony's package."
AGL increased by 8 cents, or 0.6 percent, to A$12.97 in Sydney trading on the Australian Stock Exchange, outpacing a 1.2 percent drop in the exchange's benchmark utilities index.
The board takes "collective responsibility" for the cut in the profit forecast, said Johnson, who faced about three hours of questioning from shareholders.
"Caning is probably not a bad example," Johnson said of shareholders' reaction to Anthony's pay package. "That's the way we took it, that's the way I took it and we will learn from that."
Bloomberg News
(China Daily 11/09/2007 page16)
