I've been puzzled to see some commentary on voting against the...

I've been puzzled to see some commentary on voting against the performance incentives and just wanted to challenge your reasoning.

DB has a package agreed as part of his employment - this resolution is that part of that would be a long term incentive with a reasonable part of his remunerations tied up in shares - ie. he is rewarded by the share price going up. Irrespective of your views on DB's performance to date, this is about future direction and performance. I can't think of anything better than aligning management's financial benefits to increases in EPS and the share price.

The demands on the MD in a business like this one are great, needing to satisfy the board, employees, equity holders and debt stakeholders and balance capital, performance and risk. The share price is often not explicitly aligned to meeting company goals and there are legitimate reasons for focusing on things other than the current share price - the agency problem is a well known issue in capital finance and the quickest way to make happy shareholders is to tie executive financial incentives directly to the share price.

My thoughts for what it's worth - for the record I think DB has brought a stable influence - some see it as too conservative and would love to see a better use of cash on the horizon but I perfer it to wild swings up and down.