AkademikerPension has revealed that it has voted against almost 70 per cent of company remuneration policies and reports this annual general meeting (AGM) season.

During the Danish AGM season in 2022, the company has voted ‘no’ in 22 out of 32 meetings it has participated in, on either the remuneration report or both the report and policy. Detailing its reasons, it said that too many of the country’s largest companies run with variable salaries to top managers on an opaque basis.

AkademikerPension said virtually none of the companies have prepared remuneration reports and/or policies that live up to its requirements. This applies both when the remuneration report is only up for a vote and when both the remuneration policy and the report are up for a vote.

“Overall, we still believe that transparency is too weak. When there is variable remuneration, we want to understand which KPIs the companies measure on the basis of and how much it takes to trigger one or the other,” AkademikerPension investment manager, Anders Schelde, said.

Companies where it has voted no, include AP Moller - Maersk, Carlsberg, Novo Nordisk, Vestas and Pandora. The fund said in some cases it is because the salary is too high, other times due to uncertainty about how bonuses are calculated, and other times the pension fund lacks information about what the top managers are being measured on.

“We would like to see if the salaries of directors in comparable companies have been taken into account. You do not have to be completely out of step with your sector,” Schelde stated.

In 10 of the AGMs, AkademikerPension voted yes to both the remuneration policy and report. This applied to a number of new, smaller companies, where it voted yes due to improvements, transparency and continued constructive dialogue about further improvements.

It also voted yes to a number of finance companies that have provided transparent remuneration reports – helped by their simpler remuneration policies under the impression of the strict regulation in this area for this sector. It also voted yes to the state-owned company, Ørsted.

Share Story: