Ocado investors rebel against executive compensation



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At its annual meeting, Ocado suffered a shareholder rebellion over director compensation and promised to strengthen its commitment to investors in relation to future incentive plans.

About a quarter of the shareholders who voted opposed the policy and the compensation report, while a similar proportion did not support Ocado's "value creation plan", a profit-sharing program. long term that would allow co-founder and CEO Tim Steiner to raise £ 100 million if the company's share price has tripled over the next five years.

Ocado's shares were outstanding last year through a series of contracts to provide order fulfillment technology to retailers around the world. The most important, by far, was an agreement with the American grocer Kroger for the construction of 20 centers of this type in the United States. This news triggered a rise in the stock price that helped propel the company into the FTSE 100.

Its market value is now £ 9.6 billion, double that of Marks & Spencer – the company with which it recently agreed to form a joint venture in the food retail sector.

Andrew Harrison, former chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, who now chairs Ocado's compensation committee, said the board "recognizes that some shareholders voted against our compensation proposals" and that the final proposals reflected shareholder feedback.

"As a result of this consultation exercise, changes were made to the operation of the compensation proposals in accordance with shareholder suggestions," he said.

He also said, "We will continue to engage with shareholders on compensation and governance issues, and we are committed to consulting on the formation of future compensation policies.

Nearly 23% of the shareholders who voted also opposed a share equivalence award from Ocado's chairman of the board, retail giant Stuart Rose. Mr. Harrison stated that the Committee considered that the restrictions on the sale of these shares "ensure a sufficient alignment of interests between the company, its shareholders and the chairman."

17 percent of the shareholders objected to Mr. Harrison's re-election.

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