With the gap between employee and CEO pay growing wider and wider, it is a very rare moment indeed when a business leader agrees to give up even a fraction of a pay cheque. But the boss of Anglo American is charting a new path.
Mark Cutifani, CEO of the American mining giant, has said that he is more than happy to take a pay cut as part of an overhaul of the firm’s remuneration policies.
The company witnessed a shareholder revolt last year over executive pay, when 42 percent of investors opted to vote against new remuneration policies.
Anglo American took the revolt very seriously indeed and developed a plan that would cap executive pay, a policy which, should it be backed by investors, will be imposed retrospectively from 2014.
This will mean a significant drop in pay for Mr Cutifani.
‘I would prefer to take a pay cut and for the shareholders to be happy and supportive than to keep the policy as it is,’ Cutifani told The Daily Telegraph.
‘I’d prefer to be a respected and supported CEO of Anglo American and be paid less than to be pilloried for all the wrong reasons,’ he concluded.
The CEO has also admitted that his pay last year was unfairly skewed because of the company’s share price, which fell and then quickly recovered.
Anglo was the worst performing firm in the FTSE 100 in 2015, but became the best performing stock in 2016.
