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Investor protest over Experian boss on day of pay revolts

Thu, 2010-07-22

The Guardian

David Tyler, a boardroom veteran and chairman of two major companies,faced an embarrassing revolt over his continued tenure on the board of credit checking firm Experian, on a day when shareholders also rebelled against pay schemes at Network Rail and the two demerged arms of Cable & Wireless.

Nearly one in three Experian investors failed to endorse Tyler's re-election to the board as a non-executive – one of the biggest protest votes against a director this year. According to Manifest, the corporate governance experts, the average dissent on director elections is only 2.3%.

More than 12% of shareholders in Experian voted against Tyler's re-election but, when deliberate abstentions were included, the protest rose to 30%.

Experian was spun out of GUS in 2006 which has prompted shareholders to question Tyler's independence as he was finance director of GUS.

Experian insisted that Tyler, who is Chairman of J Sainsbury and Logica, was an "excellent non-executive and brings a huge amount of expertise and depth of knowledge".

At Network Rail, the Department for Transport made a rare intervention by abstaining on the remuneration report to protest against the £613,000 bonus to chief executive Iain Coucher. Network Rail has 100 "members" who in effect act as shareholders. DfT, which is one, said it had abstained because dissent would have "meant that we would be voting against a pay freeze for Network Rail's executives and their plans to review their management incentive plan."

Some 77 of the 100 Network Rail members voted, with 37 in favour, 31 against and nine abstentions.

Cable & Wireless Worldwide and Cable & Wireless Communications also felt shareholder ire at their first annual meetings as separate firms. At CWC, which runs networks around the globe, one in five shareholders voted against its remuneration report with another 4% abstaining.

Corporate governance group Pirc had warned salaries were too high, and objected to bonuses linked to absolute shareholder return with no requirement to outperform other companies in the telecoms sector.