Norway’s Sovereign Fund Will Vote to Support Bayer Management | Investing News
OSLO (Reuters) -Norway’s $1.3 trillion prosperity fund will vote next week to assistance best management at German drug and farm goods maker Bayer AG, but will vote versus the remuneration package of CEO Werner Baumann, it claimed on Sunday.
Shareholders will vote on April 29 at Bayer’s annual basic assembly on whether or not or not to ratify the executive board’s business enterprise perform through 2021, a regular method at German AGMs.
The Norwegian fund owned 2.27% of Bayer’s shares at the stop of 2021, valued at $1.19 billion, building it the company’s fifth greatest shareholder in accordance to Refinitiv facts.
“The board is accountable for attracting the ideal CEO and placing acceptable remuneration,” Norges Bank Financial investment Management (NBIM), which operates the fund, said in a assertion.
It cited the will need for a “substantial proportion of yearly remuneration” to be presented as shares locked in for five to 10 a long time, transparency to keep away from “unacceptable outcomes” and that all advantages should really have a obvious small business rationale.
While the AGM vote is largely symbolic, with no bearing on management’s legal responsibility or tenure, it is however noticed as a important gauge of trader sentiment.
Baumann, whose contract as CEO runs till 2024, is less than pressure to increase return on expense which has been lagging that of its rivals adhering to the $63 billion takeover of agri business Monsanto in 2018.
Bayer’s shares tumbled in the months that adopted the acquisition when jurors uncovered Monsanto liable in many U.S. lawsuits for not warning of alleged cancer challenges joined to its weedkiller Roundup.
The Norwegian fund joined a vast majority of shareholders at the 2019 AGM in rebuking Bayer’s management, but did, however, give its backing to Baumann and his team for the next two years.
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik, enhancing by Gwladys Fouche and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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