The UniCredit shareholders’ meeting says yes with 69.1% of the votes to the bank’s new remuneration policy, which provides for a 30% increase in the salary of CEO Andrea Orcel, up to 9.75 million euros.
The approval of the assembly, although becoming more and more probable with the passing of the days, was far from obvious. In particular since, two weeks ago, the two major global proxy advisors ISS and Glass Lewis had recommended to the shareholders to reject the revision proposed by the board, which as mentioned included, among other things, an increase in Orcel’s maximum salary to 9.75 million (of which 3.25 fixed and 6.5 variable) from the current 7.5 (2.5 million fixed and 5 variable), judging it “excessive”.
Padoan: «Grateful to the shareholders, excellence strengthened»
For Pier Carlo Padoan, chairman of UniCredit, the result allows us to «express our satisfaction for the support of the shareholders for all the proposals submitted to their vote and in particular for the new remuneration policy which was conceived to basically achieve two objectives: firstly, to strengthen our culture of performance and incentivize excellence; secondly, to ensure total alignment of long-term interests between management and shareholders. We believe these principles are the best possible and reflect our ambition to be a benchmark for our industry.”
The chairman also wanted to «express our gratitude to the shareholders who studied and understood the proposals and who actively participated in the engagement activities. We are particularly pleased to note that we had the highest shareholders’ meeting attendance for many years now and that the vast majority of positive votes came from active UniCredit shareholders who share our long-term vision”.
The shareholders’ meeting
The ordinary meeting of UniCredit shareholders, held behind closed doors, was attended by 3,641 shareholders representing 1,336,844,847 ordinary shares equal to 68.88% of the share capital through the representative designated by UniCredit.