Cape Times

Tiger Brands forks out R9.08m for its chief executive in 2018

- SANDILE MCHUNU sandile.mchunu@inl.co.za ROY COKAYNE roy.cokayne@inl.co.za

TIGER Brands paid its chief executive, Lawrence MacDougall, R9.08 million for the year to end-September, representi­ng a 6 percent increase, compared with his total remunerati­on of R8.64m in 2017.

The 2018 amount includes R339 880 for retirement funding and R153 092 listed as “other benefits”, according to the group’s annual report.

MacDougall’s annual salary, excluding other benefits and retirement funding, was R8.51m, up from R8.06m compared with 2017.

The group’s chief financial officer, Noel Doyle, took home an annual package of R6.55m, up by 7 percent compared with R6.15m last year.

Mark Bowman, the chairperso­n of the remunerati­on committee at Tiger Brands, said that despite the group’s financial performanc­e being severely impacted by a challengin­g operating environmen­t and the listeria outbreak in the 2018 financial year, the remunerati­on committee sought to leverage the remunerati­on strategy to enable the attraction and retention of key skills to support delivery of the business strategy.

“In a tough operating environmen­t, the company succeeded in attracting key employees, further strengthen­ing the Tiger Brands executive leadership team by recruiting new capabiliti­es in certain business units: marketing, strategy and human resources,” Bowman said in the annual report.

During the year, the company felt the effects of the listeriosi­s outbreak, with the group reporting a 26 percent decline in headline earnings per share to 1 587 cents, while revenue fell 9 percent to R28.5 billion.

Net profit was down by 20.6 percent to R2.39bn, while operating income fell to R3.3bn. As a result of the decline in earnings, the group did not pay its executives short-term incentives during the period.

However, Bowman said that in order for the group to support its remunerati­on strategy, the remunerati­on policy was based on aligning strategic business performanc­e with shareholde­r interests, providing a competitiv­e reward offering to attract and retain talent that enabled execution of its business strategy, rewarding and motivating winning performanc­e across all levels in the organisati­on and building a strong foundation of fair and responsibl­e pay. A PLETTENBER­G Bay pensioner, who was irate with Nedbank for acquiring his odd-lot shares when he had indicated both in writing and telephonic­ally that he did not want to sell them, claims the bank has agreed to reverse the transactio­n.

Brian Hogg said yesterday Link Market Services, the share registry and financial services provider that handled shareholde­r inquiries related to the unbundling of Old Mutual, had informed him that Nedbank had offered to reverse the transactio­n provided he pay back the money he had been paid for the shares, which he had accepted. Hogg confirmed earlier this week that he did not fill in the required forms to make an election to retain or sell his shares and conveyed his decision that he wanted to retain his Nedbank shares to Link Market Services via email and telephonic­ally. He questioned why he had to fill in forms to confirm he wanted to retain ownership of his Nedbank shares when these shares belonged to him, and wanted Nedbank to “reverse this illegal sale”.

Kedibone Molopyane, the head of group media relations at Nedbank, said yesterday that Nedbank would only be able to provide comment and know the final way forward today when Link Market Services finalised its arrangemen­t with Hogg.

Nedbank announced in October that it intended to buy back shares for cash from eligible shareholde­rs who owned less than 100 of its shares following the finalisati­on of the Old Mutual unbundling process. This followed Old Mutual reducing its majority holding in Nedbank from about 52 percent to 19.9 percent, resulting in the number of Nedbank shareholde­rs increasing from about 20 000 to about 500 000 shareholde­rs, with an estimated 1.5 percent of them owning less than 100 shares. These odd-lot holders were given the option of selling their holding to Nedbank at a 5 percent premium or retaining their shares.

However, they had to make an election if they wanted to retain their Nedbank shares and those odd-lot holders who did not were automatica­lly regarded as having accepted the odd-lot offer and chosen to dispose of their Nedbank shares to Nedbank and receive the cash considerat­ion.

Nedbank’s odd-lot offer complied with the JSE’s listing requiremen­ts, provided certain conditions were met. The bank confirmed this week that it had repurchase­d about 7.05 million of its ordinary shares.

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