
Please try another search
By Ross Kerber and Simon Jessop
BOSTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Vanguard Group Inc said it voted against the pay of Alphabet Inc executives, including new CEO Sundar Pichai, one of several examples of proxy voting the top mutual fund firm gave in a report to be released on Tuesday as it names a new stewardship chief.
The parent of search engine Google (O:GOOGL) paid Pichai's stock awards valued at $276.6 million for 2019, according to the company's proxy, accounting for nearly all his compensation.
Vanguard said in the report it "found a misalignment between pay and performance" and would have liked to see more long-term compensation tied to metrics like relative total shareholder return.
In an advisory ballot at Alphabet's annual meeting in June 25% of votes cast were "against" the pay. An Alphabet spokeswoman declined to comment on Vanguard's votes.
Vanguard also opposed Alphabet's executive pay in prior years. But like other fund firms lately, Vanguard has begun to disclose more details about its reasoning behind specific proxy votes on topics like director elections, social issues or climate policies.
John Galloway, whom Vanguard will name as its new head of stewardship on Tuesday, said an argument to keep the talks behind closed doors would be to have more candid conversations with company executives. But he is more concerned about making Vanguard's views transparent to its clients, as many votes are decided for subtle reasons.
"How we evaluate nuance is really important and certainly outstrips other concerns," Galloway said in a telephone interview.
In another example, in Britain, Vanguard said it declined to back a shareholder resolution at Barclays (L:BARC) aimed at pushing the bank to phase out financial activities in the energy and utilities sectors.
Instead, after talking to management, Vanguard wrote that it backed the company's own climate-related proposal as "we determined that management’s approach was in the best interest of long-term shareholders."
Are you sure you want to block %USER_NAME%?
By doing so, you and %USER_NAME% will not be able to see any of each other's Investing.com's posts.
%USER_NAME% was successfully added to your Block List
Since you’ve just unblocked this person, you must wait 48 hours before renewing the block.
I feel that this comment is:
Thank You!
Your report has been sent to our moderators for review
Add a Comment
We encourage you to use comments to engage with other users, share your perspective and ask questions of authors and each other. However, in order to maintain the high level of discourse we’ve all come to value and expect, please keep the following criteria in mind:
Enrich the conversation, don’t trash it.
Stay focused and on track. Only post material that’s relevant to the topic being discussed.
Be respectful. Even negative opinions can be framed positively and diplomatically. Avoid profanity, slander or personal attacks directed at an author or another user. Racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination will not be tolerated.
Perpetrators of spam or abuse will be deleted from the site and prohibited from future registration at Investing.com’s discretion.