Glencore cleanses the last of Xstrata
GLENCORE shareholders purged the company of former Xstrata directors in a brutal putsch that also returned former BP boss Tony Hayward to the top of a FTSe 100 company – albeit temporarily. Chairman Sir John Bond handed over control of yesterday’s annual meeting to Hayward after seeing early ‘ proxy’ votes that showed investors had voted him out.
As senior independent director, Hayward stepped in and will serve as interim chairman until a replacement is found.
Some 93pc of votes cast did not support Bond’s re-election, with insiders blaming his backing for a plan to pay £250m in loyalty bonuses to Xstrata staff who stayed on after the merger with Glencore.
The overwhelming vote came despite the fact that chief executive Ivan Glasenberg, who owns 8.3pc of the combined company, was bound by the terms of the merger to support Bond.
Fellow Xstrata men Con Fauconnier, Ian Strachan and Peter Hooley were also voted out, but the opposition to Fauconnier and Bond was far greater. Both served on the Xstrata remuneration committee that came up with the idea of the retention payments for 73 key staff.
Director Steve Robson was also on the Xstrata remuneration committee and resigned in advance of the meeting after seeing proxy votes weighted heavily against his re-election.
A source who was present at Glencore’s annual meeting in Zug, Switzerland, said: ‘There was a lot of ire about this and shareholders have voted with their feet.’
Some 21pc of shareholders also voted against Glencore Xstrata’s remuneration report.
The boardroom clear-out leaves Glencore Xstrata with just four board members and still without a permanent chairman.
Glasenberg has also promised to consult major shareholders such as BlackRock and Legal & General over boardroom appointments.
The purge also sweeps away the last vestiges of Xstrata’s senior personnel, giving Ivan Glasenberg a tighter grip on control of the group.
He has already vowed to clear out layers of Xstrata management to increase cost savings and fit in with Glencore’s more centralised power structure.
Glencore (up 3.2p to 337p) also faced calls from campaign group Global Witness to commission an independent inquiry into its deals to buy mining rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Global Witness cited fellow miner eNRC, which is in the midst of a corruption probe involving Congolese mines it bought from Israeli diamond tycoon Dan Gertler.