Italian AGM Executive Compensation Increases Shareholder Aversion

This article, published in the A&F Magazine - La Repubblica, highlights the intolerance of institutional investors during the last AGMs to the anomalies, magnitude and exceptions relating to executive pay. This is what emerged from the Morrow Sodali 2021 Institutional Investor Survey regarding top managers' remuneration.

For the second consecutive year, executive compensation received a large proportion of votes against during the 2021 AGMs.

In line with a reduction of around EUR 50 billion of aggregate turnover for large non-financial listed companies (-20%), the average CEO remuneration is in line with this trend, down from 3.4 million in 2019 to 2.8 million in 2020 (-19%).

"The market, and also the public opinion, can endorse executive pay when a regular engagement between companies and shareholders is properly planned and executed effectively," explains Fabio Bianconi, Morrow Sodali’s Senior Director.

"In more mature markets, shareholders engagement is done at an earlier stage and more frequently than in Italy," adds Fabio Bianconi.

Read more here (in Italian, subscribers only).