KEY POINTS:
NZX chairman Simon Allen admits he and his board "stuffed up" the process of persuading shareholders of the merits of an aborted share scheme for chief executive Mark Weldon.
But he told the company annual meeting in Wellington yesterday the directors unanimously supported Weldon and remained committed to aligning the chief executive's remuneration with shareholders' interests.
They would come back with a fresh proposal by the middle of the year, Allen said.
Shareholder Brian Gaynor said it had been a long time since he had seen a chief executive hung out to dry as Weldon had been, and he queried why the directors had not got the backing of major shareholders before formally proposing the scheme.
Allen said they had been surprised by the reaction, in particular to the vesting criteria - the shareholder return hurdle to be cleared before Weldon got the shares - which was not very different from the scheme in place for the past five years.
He conceded there should have been more consultation, but said the directors had had some feedback about the issue of control and had responded by placing a cap on Weldon's ability to vote his shares.
"We will have to talk to people, assimilate the feedback and talk to Mark. We will come up with a proposal that can be accepted."
Weldon said shareholders' compounded total return in the 3 1/2 years since the company listed had ben 60 per cent a year and its price/earnings multiple was similar to its peers in much larger countries.
Asked after the meeting why, in the light of such returns, the remuneration package had met such opposition, he said: "It's a much larger cultural issue that I'm not qualified to opine on. There are a number of people in New Zealand who are willing to stick their head above the parapet.
"I'm one of them and if you do that you risk people taking a whack at it.
"I'm not suggesting any comparisons, but the CEO of the Australian Stock Exchange has 1.2 million shares and they are worth $45. That's more than $50 million over three years. The rest of the world is very different."
