JOHANNESBURG – Tiger Brands paid its chief executive, Lawrence MacDougall, R9.08million for the year to end-September, representing a 6percent increase, compared with his total remuneration of R8.64m in 2017.
The 2018 amount includes R339880 for retirement funding and R153092 listed as “other benefits”, according to the group’s annual report.
MacDougall’s annual salary, excluding other benefits and retirement funding, was R8.51m, up from R8.06m compared with 2017.
The group’s chief financial officer, Noel Doyle, took home an annual package of R6.55m, up by 7percent compared with R6.15m last year.
Mark Bowman, the chairperson of the remuneration committee at Tiger Brands, said that despite the group’s financial performance being severely impacted by a challenging operating environment and the listeria outbreak in the 2018 financial year, the remuneration committee sought to leverage the remuneration strategy to enable the attraction and retention of key skills to support delivery of the business strategy.
“In a tough operating environment, the company succeeded in attracting key employees, further strengthening the Tiger Brands executive leadership team by recruiting new capabilities in certain business units: marketing, strategy and human resources,” Bowman said in the annual report.
During the year, the company felt the effects of the listeriosis outbreak, with the group reporting a 26percent decline in headline earnings per share to 1587cents, while revenue fell 9 percent to R28.5billion.
Net profit was down by 20.6percent to R2.39bn, while operating income fell to R3.3bn. As a result of the decline in earnings, the group did not pay its executives short-term incentives during the period.
However, Bowman said that in order for the group to support its remuneration strategy, the remuneration policy was based on aligning strategic business performance with shareholder interests, providing a competitive reward offering to attract and retain talent that enabled execution of its business strategy, rewarding and motivating winning performance across all levels in the organisation and building a strong foundation of fair and responsible pay.