BL Premium reports that at the Sasol annual general meeting on Friday, 28% of shareholders voted against the petrochemical group’s remuneration policy.  

Moreover, 56% voted against the implementation report, which detailed how former joint CEOs Stephen Cornell and Bongani Nqwababa were cumulatively paid almost R100m, of which R35m was for “mutual separation”.  The exit of the CEOs from Sasol came five months after the full extent of the problems at the Lake Charles operation in the US became known to the market and costs ballooned, causing the share price to plummet.  Sasol chair Sipho Nkosi said although an independent review on what went wrong at Lake Charles — which has not been made public — found no wrongdoing on the part of the joint CEOs, the board decided that the best interests of the company would be served by an expedited separation.  “We still had to respect rights and contractual obligations of the joint CEOs ... in our view [the separation arrangements] were appropriate and in the best interest of the company.”  The remuneration votes were nonbinding and advisory in nature but, in terms of the King code on corporate governance, as they were not passed by more than 75% of the vote, the board must engage shareholders.  A special resolution on the remuneration of nonexecutive directors was narrowly passed with 76% of the vote.  Sasol announced on Wednesday that the fees would be slashed by 20% from what was proposed in the notice of the AGM and that a new framework for nonexecutive director fees would be put forward for shareholders to vote on in 2021.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Lisa Steyn at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
• Read too, Golden handshakes given for resolving Lake Charles Chemicals Project issues, at Business Report

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page