Ownership responsibilities: Focus on remuneration policy

As we discuss in detail in our Policy on ownership responsibilities, we believe that a company’s remuneration policy should aim to attract and retain competent executives, reward these executives fairly in a way that is consistent with their performance, and align the incentives for these executives with the best interests of shareholders. This is easy to say, but can be difficult to implement in practice. The perfect remuneration policy probably does not exist. We remain mindful of this when considering our voting recommendations on remuneration policies. We also remain mindful that the value which key executives can add (or subtract) for a company can dwarf their remuneration, and that companies compete to employ competent executives. Read this recent Financial Mail article, which quotes Portfolio manager Simon Raubenheimer discussing Investec’s remuneration policy.