Capital Shopping Centres shareholders have rebelled against the company’s “excessive” executive pay packages.
At the shopping centre owner’s annual meeting on 25 April, more then a quarter of investors voted against two of the directors’ remuneration.
The protest votes, from 28.7% of shareholders, followed reports from two shareholder advisory groups, PIRC and Institutional Shareholder Services, which said that the package of awards was “excessive”.
Despite the remuneration vote being advisory rather than binding, and falling below the 50% “defeat” threshold, a spokesperson for PIRC said that a near 30% disapproval was still a “serious rebuke from shareholders”.
He added that companies in the FTSE All-Share Index received an average of 6% shareholder votes against pay in 2011, and only one in 10 companies received at least 20% disapproval.
David Fischel (pictured), the company’s chief executive, was paid £1.27m last year including a bonus and deferred shares – down from £1.3m in 2010, while Matthew Roberts, CSC’s finance director, was paid £922,000. They also received long-term share awards worth a combined £2.3m.
Both have received pay increases this year, with Fischel’s base salary rising by 5% and Roberts’ by 9.6% in 2012.
It is the third year in a row that the REIT has awarded Fischel and Roberts cash and share bonuses in excess of 200% of their salary, despite pledging to do so only in “exceptional circumstances”.
However, in its annual report this year the company pledged to carry out a “root-and-branch” review of pay this year.
CSC declined to comment.
