Shareholders shoot down Shell's payouts

20 May 2009

Oil major Royal Dutch Shell's (RDS) board was shocked by shareholders who refused to go along with the company's remuneration report and shot down the board's proposals to award its directors bonuses.

The company said that the unexpected result revealed that the more than 50 per cent of shareholders had given a thumbs down to it.

The company said the shareholders rejected the report 59.42 per cent to 40.58 per cent with 1.3 billion votes in favour and 1.9 billion votes against.

Analysts say that it was time the company paid heed to shareholder objections and re-appraised its whole remuneration package and put it back to the vote of its shareholders.

The payout dispute has erupted in the wake of the poor performance of the company as against its peers with shares taking a fall of around 25 per cent from £21.50 to yesterday's close of £16.35

The terms of a previous agreement allowed directors to earn up to 200 per cent of their salaries in shares if the company outperformed three of its rivals.