[miningmx.com] – SRINIVASAN Venkatakrishnan, CEO of AngloGold Ashanti, has informed the company’s board that he will decline a salary increase for the 2014 financial year and would refuse a cash bonus for the current year.
“It’s my own initiative because the debate in South Africa is not really an issue of executive pay; it’s the pay of CEOs,” he said on the sidelines of the firm’s third quarter production and financial results today.
The company would still seek to remunerate its executive competitively because “we want to retain them,” said Venkatakrishnan who added that the board’s executive had been slimmed down anyway to about 10 individuals from 13 previously.
According to Bloomberg News, Venkatakrishnan received a basic salary of $1.06m and a bonus of some $314,000, as well as stock options totalling just over $3m, for the 2012 fiscal year when he was chief financial officer of the company. He took over the role of CEO from predecessor Mark Cutifani in April.
In addition, Venkatakrishnan is to launch a bursary for about three to five students in the financial and accounting disciplines at the University of the Witwatersrand of which about half of the successful applicants will be female.
“These are historically disadvantaged South Africans, means-tested, and from labour-sending areas,” said Venkatakrishnan. “It’s my own initiative and something that I want to do,” he said.
The issue of executive pay was thrust back into the spotlight last week at the Jo’burg Indaba mining conference when Michael Schroder, who runs Old Mutual’s gold fund, said that executive remuneration that was out of step with company and share price performance must stop.
“My advice to the CEOs: julle bly fokken lekker. R45m? Bliksem! (You’re sitting f*** pretty. Damn!) Your personal greed is the biggest obstacle for the turning of this trend. Come down with the pay packages or get out,” said Schroder in an article published by Business Day and BDLive.
Government’s Public Investment Corporation (PIC) said in August that it had voted against the wage proposals in the annual general meetings of Anglo American Platinum, Gold Fields, AngloGold Ashanti and Sibanye Gold because they had failed to track the performance of the companies.
However, it’s worth remarking that Venkat has fared well with a decision in August to ‘walk the talk” by buying R1.62m worth of company shares. Since then, AngloGold Ashanti’s share price has gained about 30%, an improvement crystallised by the third quarter performance in which earnings came in at $110m compared to $8m in the second quarter.
