Northern Star Resources executive chairman Bill Beament has been handsomely rewarded for the gold miner’s strong performance over the past few years, with the recent exercising of three million performance rights.
Northern Star Resources executive chairman Bill Beament has been handsomely rewarded for the gold miner’s strong performance over the past few years, with the recent exercising of three million performance rights.
By exercising the performance rights, Mr Beament has received three million fully paid ordinary shares at zero cost.
With Northern Star shares trading at around $9.58 when the rights were exercised, this equates to a benefit to Mr Beament of $28.7 million. The shares have since slipped to $9.21.
He was able to exercise the performance rights after they vested on 21 October.
That followed the achievement of defined performance hurdles over a three-year period to 16 October.
The performance hurdles were based on Northern Star’s total shareholder return, in absolute terms (15 per cent compound annual growth) and relative terms (greater than the TSR of half a defined peer group), and its workplace safety performance.
The granting of the performance rights was approved at Northern Star’s 2016 annual meeting, when only about 11 per cent of shareholders voted against.
At the time, Norther Star said the performance rights were worth an estimated $6.3 million.
There was a much larger protest vote at today’s annual meeting, when 41 per cent of shareholders voted against the granting of a further 535,000 performance rights to Mr Beament.
In addition, 5.3 per cent of shareholders voted against the re-election of Mr Beament as a director, despite his role in building Northern Star into one of Australia’s most successful gold miners.
Curiously, only two per cent of shareholders voted against the company’s remuneration report.
Northern Star announced last month that Mr Beament would have his fixed annual remuneration nearly doubled for the 2020 financial year, with the potential to earn up to $7.2 million.
Mr Beament will receive $1.4 million in base cash salary and superannuation, compared to $755,000 for the 2019 fiscal year.
Mr Beament can also receive a short-term incentive bonus of up to 113.75 per cent of his fixed annual remuneration, which can be delivered as 50 per cent cash and 50 per cent performance rights, or completely as performance rights.
He can also receive up to 300 per cent of fixed annual remuneration via a long-term incentive bonus, which will all be through performance rights.
Inclusive of the incentive bonuses, Mr Beament has the potential to earn up to $7.2 million this fiscal year, compared to the $3.175 million he received in total last financial year.
