Macquarie's AGM shocker
Shemara Wikramanayake worked the phones to avert a first strike, to no avail.
Macquarie Group held its annual meeting in Sydney on Thursday morning. As an embarrassing protest vote against the company's remuneration report loomed, the AFR's Chanticleer column revealed that Macquarie's CEO Shemara Wikramanayake was calling large shareholders herself to talk them off the ledge.
"I'm only making half a dozen calls on this," her script began to each fund manager, which is an elite David Gonski mind trick to simultaneously make the supplicant sound less desperate and their quarry feel special. Even still, 25 per cent of Macquarie's shares were cast against the remuneration report, delivering a first strike.
This is so far from normal. The last major company CEO who sought to influence shareholders directly on his own pay was QBE's Frank O'Halloran nearly 20 years ago – and that was the last time the board of a large-cap thought it was proper conduct.