In 2023, we engaged with four companies for the third and last time: Adobe, Nike, Cisco and Prologis. All four have made improvements since we started engaging with them, as shown in our scoring sheet.
2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Δ 2021/2023 | |
Adobe | 5.1 | 5.1 | 6.1 | 1.0 |
Cisco | 5.0 | 5.4 | 5.9 | 0.9 |
Nike | 7.4 | 9.1 | 9.0 | 1.6 |
Prologis | 6.3 | 7.4 | 7.7 | 1.4 |
Since all four companies have improved their remuneration structure, now achieving satisfactory scores, we decided to keep them in our investable universe after successful engagement. However, challenges and room for improvement remain. This is mainly related to the level of CEO pay and narrowing the gap between CEO and median worker pay.
The other companies we engaged with in 2023 are Gen Digital (for the second time) and AT&T (first time, new in portfolio). And although the company was not part of our remuneration engagement program, we also discussed executive remuneration with Corbion. We are the lead investor on behalf of the Dutch institutional investor organisation Eumedion. Some positives are that Corbion now has:
- incorporated FCF as a new STIP metric,
- increased the weight of ESG in the LTIP (from 12.5% to 25%),
- increased the weight of ROCE in the LTIP (from 12.5% to 20%),
- decreased the weight of relative TSR in the LTIP (from 35% to 30%),
- removed full accelerated vesting of the LTIP in case of a change of control within the first term of appointment of an executive.
Continued monitoring
Even if we concluded our engagement on this topic with several companies last year, we will keep monitoring their pay levels and structure. As with the companies still in our engagement program, we will keep urging them to reduce the gap between executive pay and median worker pay. In the end, that’s our main objective.