Mulroney cannabis pay $13.9M
• Former prime minister Brian Mulroney has made nearly $14 million since joining the board of directors of New York-based cannabis company Acreage Holdings in 2018.
In a report published Tuesday by Toronto- based Bedford Consulting Group, Mulroney was deemed to be among the highest- paid directors of a cannabis company. His total compensation, including base salary, annual bonus, equity ( share- based awards and options- based awards) and pension, was reported to be $13,913,873.
During his time in the PMO from 1984 to 1993, his government introduced legislation that categorized cannabis at the same level as heroin. However, by the time cannabis became legal in Canada, he had changed his view.
In October of 2018, he told CBC News, “It takes a while for certain people and certain things to catch up with reality, and great social advances — as I’ve indicated — come in waves. And this is one of the waves that I think will have Canada showing the way for the rest of the world.”
The data presented by Bedford Consulting was collected in October last year. It analyzed 96 cannabis companies listed publicly on the TSX, TSXV, CSE, NYSE, Nasdaq and ASX, including 449 board members and 437 executive officers.
The top 10 executive officers in the cannabis sector and their total compensation is as follows:
❚ Brendan Kennedy, president and CEO of Tilray Inc. ($31,817,459)
❚ Robert Daino, COO of Acreage Holdings, Inc. ($19,531,750)
❚ Kevin Murphy, CEO of Acreage Holdings, Inc. ($10,144,875)
❚ Irwin D. Simon, Interim CEO and Chair of Aphria Inc. ($9,577,296)
❚ Bruce Linton, former Co- CEO and Chair of Canopy Growth Corporation ($9,327,800)
❚ Sébastien St-louis, CEO of HEXO Corp. ($8,849,943)
❚ Peter Aceto, former CEO of Canntrust Holdings Inc. ($8,251,626)
❚ Torsten Kuenzlen, former CEO of Sundial Growers Inc. ($7,987,203)
❚ Mark Zekulin, former CEO of Canopy Growth Corporation ($5,958,440)
❚ Justin Gover, CEO of GW Pharmaceuticals ($4,727,235)
Aceto was terminated in July 2019. His option value went to zero.
“The information is collected via public disclosure docs,” says Darren Raycroft, co- lead for cannabis and consumer process at Bedford Consulting Group
“All the companies that we looked at were publicly traded organizations.”
Beyond compensation, the findings of the study also revealed a disparity when it comes to top positions held by women in the cannabis space.
Only 38 per cent of cannabis companies had at least one female board member. A mere eight per cent of the 437 chief executives the consulting group looked at were female.