A non-binding vote, but closely scrutinized: the shareholders of the world’s fourth largest automobile group, Stellantis, will give their opinion on Tuesday on the remuneration of its general director Carlos Tavares, which is once again causing controversy.
Some 36.5 million euros is the total amount that the boss of this industrial giant could receive, according to the company’s annual financial report.
The general meeting of shareholders is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. in Amsterdam.
This remuneration for Mr. Tavares, 65, includes in particular the payment of a bonus of ten million euros for the “transformation” of the group created in 2021 with the merger of PSA and Fiat-Chrysler.
It also includes retirement pensions which will be paid over the long term, but also bonuses awarded only if he meets the objectives set for 2025, the last year of his current mandate at the head of the manufacturer.
For the 2023 financial year, Mr. Tavares will initially receive 23.5 million euros. Paid largely in shares, this remuneration also increases with the value of the group’s stock, which has almost doubled over the past three years.
With its 14 brands including Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Dodge and Opel, Stellantis published on February 15 a new record profit of 18.6 billion euros for 2023, up 11% over one year. Its turnover is close to 190 billion euros.
The general director attracted the wrath of French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022, who deemed the “astronomical” amount of his compensation “shocking and excessive”.
Stellantis, for its part, believes that this remuneration should rather be compared with that of multinationals like Boeing in the United States (Dave Calhoun, $33 million for 2023). The group makes the majority of its sales in Europe, but draws most of its profits from the American market.
“Make a law”
Traveling on Monday to the Trémery factory (Moselle), Carlos Tavares assumed this remuneration, which has “a contractual dimension between the company and me, as for a football player and a Formula 1 driver”.
“90% of my salary is made by the company’s results, (…) so this proves that the company’s results are apparently not too bad,” added Mr. Tavares at the microphone of France Bleu Lorraine Nord. “If you think this is not acceptable, make a law and change the law and I will respect it.”
Abstention by the French State
Unlike what would have happened if Stellantis’ head office was located in France, the shareholder vote will be purely consultative, the company being governed by Dutch law.
Shareholders had rejected Mr. Tavares’ remuneration for the 2021 financial year before validating it for 2022 at almost 80%.
Several investor advisory firms have recommended voting against this year, including the American agency Glass Lewis which expressed “serious reservations”.
Same position at the Proxinvest agency. Among CAC40 managers, “the median is five million” euros of remuneration, and in the United States this reaches 15 million, noted its general director Charles Pinel on BFM Business on Monday, questioning Mr. Tavares .
“Be careful, you are responsible for cohesion within your society” and even more broadly “of the capitalist system,” he added.
The CGT Stellantis decried a “totally shocking and scandalous” salary equivalent to 100,000 euros per day, “an increase of almost 50%, when most of us got only 3.7%, and are struggling to finish the month “.
The automobile giant indicated on February 15 that it would redistribute nearly 1.9 billion euros to its employees around the world.
The group’s shareholders will receive around 7.7 billion euros for the 2023 financial year.
The largest shareholder of Stellantis is the Exor holding company of the Agnelli family (14.2%), followed by that of the Peugeot family (7%) and the French State via Bpifrance (6%).
The general director of the public investment bank, Nicolas Dufourcq, indicated at the end of March that he would “abstain on these questions of remuneration”, while “we have reached levels which are effectively American, for a group that is quintessentially American, but may indeed not be entirely understood in Europe.”