Oprah cashes in at weight-loss firm

OPRAH WINFREY collected the biggest compensation among the directors of Weight Watchers International last year, despite skipping several board meetings and not attending the company’s annual meeting.

Winfrey, who agreed in 2015 to buy a stake in the weight-loss company and join its board, received $264 753 (R3.6 million) for her services last year, according to a regulatory filing on Monday. That’s more than twice the amount given to the second highest-paid director, Denis Kelly.

Weight Watchers also disclosed that Winfrey was the sole director to attend fewer than 75% of the board’s 10 meetings last year. The 63 year old also was a no-show at the Weight Watchers annual meeting, and won’t attend this year’s shareholder meeting on May 9.

“We expect directors to attend and participate in all meetings of the board of directors,” the board wrote in the filing, which didn’t provide an explanation for Winfrey’s absences other than “scheduling conflicts”.

Winfrey’s attendance falls below the standards set by proxy advisory firms such as Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis & Co, which give guidance to shareholders on director elections. Both firms generally recommend withholding votes for directors who attend fewer than 75% of board and committee meetings, unless acceptable reasons for the absences are disclosed.

Still, there’s little risk of Winfrey losing her seat. The media magnate owns 14.7% of Weight Watchers, including a block of unexercised stock options. And she has a voting agreement with the company’s largest shareholder, Luxembourg-based Artal Group, which owns 46% of the shares. Winfrey, whose term expires next year, is therefore all but certain to get support of a majority of the voting shares.

Winfrey, who has a net worth of $3.2 billion, sent Weight Watchers’ shares soaring when it was announced that she had agreed to act as a spokesperson for the brand. Since then, she’s buoyed the company’s volatile stock by discussing her weight loss on the programme in tweets and television adverts.

Absentee directors are rare. More than 98% of companies in the Russell 3000 Index that reported director attendance for their most recent fiscal year said directors attended at least threefourths of all meetings, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Winfrey’s compensation included $180 000 paid to the Screen Actors Guild-Producers Pension and Health Plans. She also received $37 528 in cash and $47 225 in stock. Other directors got packages ranging from $86 404 to $106 404. – Bloomberg