De La Rue and Dunlam prepare for a response: Many companies face shareholder meetings amid disputes over pay and performance
- Dunlam set for shareholders revolt over boss Nick Wilkinson’s £2.7m salary
- Link Group is also facing disquiet over its executive pay
- De la Rue hasn’t fared well since losing the contract to print post-Brexit passports
Several companies faced shareholder meetings this week amid disputes over pay and performance.
Furniture business Dunlam, fund supervisor Link Group and banknote printer De La Rue are preparing to appear with investors.
Dunelm, which was founded in 1979 to sell curtains on Leicester market stalls, is set for a shareholder revolt over boss Nick Wilkinson’s £2.7m pay packet. The home furnishing chain, which will hold its annual general meeting (AGM) on Wednesday, has been blasted over ‘exorbitant’ pay – with an average employee paid 120 times more.
Facing the music: Several companies face shareholder meetings this week over pay and performance
Shareholder advisory group Pirc has asked investors to vote against the firm’s pay report because the pay gap is ‘unacceptable’.
The opposition comes despite Wilkinson’s wages being less than £3.8m. Andrew Speck of the High Pay Center said that Dunlam was ‘tone deaf’. ,
The call to vote against it is absolutely correct. ‘The wages of most employees are falling in real terms.’
Link Group, whose role in the Neil Woodforde investment fund scandal has seen it face multimillion-pound fines, is also facing disquiet over its executive pay.
The Australian company, whose AGM is on Wednesday, paid its chief executive Vivek Bhatia more than half a million pounds last year.
Pirc is, again, advising shareholders to tone down the pay report as bosses could be given more than 200 per cent of their pay in ‘incentives’. It comes as Link is trying to sell its UK arm, which was to oversee Woodforde’s management of its flagship investment fund.
De la Rue has not fared well since losing a lucrative contract to print Britain’s post-Brexit Blue Passports in 2018. shareholders.
In an unusual twist, the two companies have become embroiled in a dispute, with De La Rue accusing Crystal Amber of conspiring to ‘manipulate the market’ and Crystal Amber accusing its investment company of defamation.
De la Rue has called a meeting on Friday to allow investors to vote on the future of chairman Kevin Loosemore after the firm’s third profit warning in a year last week.
