Owning shares in the best-performing stock among the top 200 companies in the local bourse was not reward enough for almost one in five G8 Education investors, who voted against the salaries paid to the childcare operator’s top executives in 2013.
At the company’s AGM on the Gold Coast yesterday, investors – representing about 19 per cent of votes cast – voted against the company’s remuneration report.
G8 chair Jenny Hutson dismissed the dissenting vote as institutional investors who reflexively vote against remuneration reports, saying on the whole she had never presented to a happier group. “I think it’s part of a trend to say less is better but I think on any informed basis our executives are modestly rewarded,” she said. “The mood of the meeting was very positive.”
Managing director Chris Scott had total remuneration of $444,490 in 2013, according to G8’s annual report. Ms Hutson was paid $96,838 in the year.
The executive director of proxy advisory ISS Ulysses Chioatto said the group advised its clients to vote against the remuneration report because of loans provided to executives.
“Our concern is that they have an unusual loan structure being used to pay executives on top of their fixed salary,” he said. “The loans have no performance measures.”
Dean Paatsch, a partner at proxy advisory Ownership Matters, said he was not concerned by G8’s remuneration, but said the protest vote could reflect other problems. “To me, that seems like dissatisfaction generally with other issues,” he said.
G8’s largest institutional shareholder Perpetual, which controls 5.5 per cent of the company, voted for the remuneration report.
“They’ve made a lot of people a lot of money and didn’t pay themselves much in the beginning,” fund manager Jack Collopy said. “They really are the benchmark in childcare roll-ups.”
G8 shares have gained 93 per cent in the past 12 months.
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