As a long-standing shareholder in Abcam (ABC), I have just received the Annual Report and I am not happy.
Abcam rather surprised the market when they issued their preliminary results which showed a massive investment in a new Oracle IT system was in difficulties. Clearly the project is over-budget and over-schedule. Costs are ramping up in other areas also and the result was a lowered broker forecast and an instant collapse in the share price – down over 30% at one point on the day. It’s been recovering since but it certainly looked like a case of mismanagement of the IT function. As a former IT manager of a large public company, I have seen this kind of thing before so I am none too impressed. Massive commitments to a big-bang approach to a new IT system which is sold on the basis that it will solve all your problems, but rarely does. So that will be one thing to raise at the AGM which I plan to attend.
But remuneration will be another issue to be questioned. The CEO, Alan Hirzell, seems to be doing a good job but his pay last year was £1.8 million. The company is now proposing a new Remuneration Policy which will increase the maximum potential LTIP award from 150% to 400%. In my view this is outrageously generous – I normally vote against any bonus scheme that awards more than 100% of salary as it promotes risky behaviour of the worst kind as we saw in the financial crisis with banker’s bonuses. The CFO will also get an LTIP with a maximum 200% bonus. Although there will be performance targets the justification given is that it will “promote the underlying philosophy of share ownership among our Executive Directors and reward the sustainable delivery of long-term profitable growth”. Hogwash is my comment.
So I will be voting against Louise Patten who is Chair of the Remuneration Committee as I did last year, and against her two colleagues, Mara Aspinall and Sue Harris who also have too many “roles” at other organisations in my view – contrary to ShareSoc guidelines. Also I will be voting against the new Chairman, Peter Allen, who should know better than to allow this kind of pay package to go forward. Plus I will be voting against the Remuneration Report and Remuneration Policy recommendations. In addition, there is a resolution to approve a change to the 2015 Share Option Plan for staff which permits nil-cost awards which seems unjustified so a vote against that also.
Note that they are also introducing a new all-employee share purchase plan which is not even being put to shareholders – not required under AIM rules they say.
Incidentally Louise Patten has an interesting career history. To quote from Wikipedia “In 2006 she started as a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer plc. As chairman of the Remuneration Committee, she was responsible for approving a bonus scheme which was criticised for making it easier for executive directors to change the associated growth targets”. She was also a non-executive director of Bradford & Bingley when the company failed and was nationalised in 2008. There may be more interesting information that I could not see because in Google a search for “Louise Patten” retrieves only a few entries with the statement “Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe”.
I suggest other shareholders vote against the aforementioned resolutions likewise.
But it is easy to vote if you are on the register of the company and have been sent a proxy voting form. Equiniti, the company’s registrar, do provide an easy on-line voting system unlike other registrars, although for some peculiar reason they do not advertise the fact this year. All you need is the three numbers on the voting card and you can vote here: https://www.shareview.co.uk/views2/asp/VoteLogin.asp . No need to register or remember your log-in and password – just vote. As I said to a Link Asset Services representative at another AGM last week, why don’t they provide a simple system like that? They just wish to collect email addresses in my view by having people register and there is no security issue as they claim as it’s very unlikely that anyone would intercept the proxy voting card.
Registrars do need regulating by the FCA in my view, as I have said before, to put a stop to this kind of nonsense.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
