Business Times reports that Capitec has changed its executive remuneration policy after shareholders expressed dissatisfaction with the discretion allowed in the vesting of incentives for management.
In its annual report released last week, Danie Meintjies, chair of the bank’s remuneration committee, reported that shareholders had expressed concern that performance conditions for management were “not sufficiently challenging”, and that the vesting of the 2018 long-term incentive grants in 2022 had been based on the performance of the two years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. “Following extensive engagement with our shareholders, we resolved to no longer apply any discretion to the vesting requirements and subsequently included the 2021 financial year in the measurement of performance of the 2019 grant, at the end of 2023,” Meintjies advised. Capitec’s remuneration committee met shareholders in the months after its AGM in May last year when the remuneration policy and implementation reports received 79.08% and 52.54% of total votes respectively. In the year ended February 2023, Capitec paid its executive directors R114m, including R62m for CEO Gerrie Fourie, down from R92m a year earlier. Andre du Plessis, one of the bank’s co-founders who retired as CFO last year, received R31m, down from R60m a year earlier. Kwanele Ngogela of shareholder activist group Just Share said changes to Capitec’s remuneration policy reflected a growing awareness among investors that wage differentials in the SA labour market remained unjustifiably high. “Shareholder disgruntlement and demand for greater accountability and transparency on executive pay is justified,” he stated.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Dineo Faku at Business Times (subscriber access only)
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