(10 November 2011 – Australia) Commonwealth Bank (CBA) chief Ralph Norris had his final general meeting on Tuesday, and the New Zealander certainly left Australia’s biggest bank in better shape than he found it.Part of the general meeting included the CBA board exercising its own “discretion” to change the terms of their pay.
On top of their other ample remuneration, executives could win another A$36.1 million in long-term incentive money if they exceeded certain “customer satisfaction” benchmarks.
They failed to meet their targets but were rewarded with A$8.5 million of the pool anyway as the board decided to use its “discretion” and change the benchmarks three years later.
A few of the shareholders were onto this at the annual meeting yesterday. The CBA remuneration report attracted a 14.4 percent vote against it.
And that was despite two of the three proxy advisors missing the detail, buried as it was deeply in the disclosure materials.