The Fairfax board has also been wrestling with a constant barrage of criticism from major shareholder Gina Rinehart, who owns 14.9% of the company and has been fighting for representation on the company’s board – so far without success.
Rinehart sent the chief development officer of her company Hancock Prospecting, John Klepec, to the meeting yesterday – and he didn’t fail to stir things up.
Klepec joined a long line of shareholders criticising the performance of the company, its board and particularly chairman Roger Corbett.
Klepec said the company should prioritise paying down debt and selling assets to restore some value to shareholders, who have seen the company sink to all-time lows on a number of occasions in the last month.
“How can we not be critical when we’ve lost so much money?” he said.
Klepec even compared the Fairfax situation to that of Lance Armstrong, saying there has been plenty of blood spilled at the riders’ level, but none at board level.
But Klepec’s biggest weapon was the votes attached to Rinehart’s 14.9% stake and he used them to vote against the company’s remuneration report.
Under new laws, a company that gets two “strikes” against its remuneration report – a strike being a “no” vote of 25% or more – will face a board spill the following year. Rinehart’s shares held take the “no” vote at yesterday’s meeting to 34.4%, giving Fairfax its first strike.
Investors did win one concession though – chairman Roger Corbett agreed to calls from the floor to reduce his chairman’s fee by about 7% to below $400,000.
