I do not see local shareholders and investors taking to the streets, as the Mediterranean Arabs are doing from Syria to Morocco to show their dissatisfaction at the little rewards coming their way while those in charge amass millions. Truth be told, several of those who attend annual general meetings of listed firms do so with the aim of indulging themselves in the rather poor fare many a time provided at the conclusion of the AGM and see anyone raising questions as postponing their grabs at food trays. ‘Poor fare’ when compared to the receptions hosted by humble and not so barefoot ‘workers’ to celebrate some wedding anniversary, First Holy Communion or Confirmation or even prior to elections. 

It was not always like this. I remember years back one particular AGM held at the Dragonara at which several shareholders, including a trade unionist bank manager, shouting and gesticulating at the meeting to drown out another shareholder, a politician no less, who at the time had just suffered an electoral defeat and seemed up to his old tricks again, tricks used for years in Parliament to pass through measures and legislation at odds with Malta’s basic values and culture. 

The online version of the Wall Street Journal reported that on 9 May “Chief executives at the biggest US companies saw their pay jump sharply in 2010, as boards rewarded them for strong profit and share-price growth with bigger bonuses and stock grants”.

The median value of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive awards for CEOs of 350 major companies surged 11 per cent to $9.3 million, according to a study of proxy statements conducted for The Wall Street Journal by management consultancy Hay Group.

What I therefore find odd about the local setting is that, apart from Board Directors sometimes grabbing a quarter of a million euros shared between seven people in a year where no dividend is to be declared and shareholders have to lump it, the way is paved for some new entrant in said company with just a few years at a fast tracked top job to be jump started to CEO position and earn €10,000 a month excluding other perks, joined no doubt by other senior managers’ higher salaries which are not disclosed by the  CFO even in reply to a direct question put in another AGM, but glossed over as “increases according to the Collective Agreement”.

Perhaps if stimulating lectures by visiting Fulbright professors, as that on “Media and Democracy in the New Mediterranean”, were to be made accessible to a wider audience by having them in the evening, and also in Gozo, many more citizen shareholders and investors would get the enabling stimulus to voice and organise a more spirited defence of their part ownership of listed firms.

G. Bonett

MARSALFORN