Thursday 26 April 2007

RBS update

The vote on the RBS share option scheme yesterday has been obscured by the rather bigger news of the bank bidding for ABN Amro. However this report in an Irish paper gives the details. About a quarter (22.44%) of shareholders voted against, and that is after some last minute concessions from the company.

It will be one of the bigger votes against this season, but actually the level of opposition is perhaps a bit low. Effectively the company was asking shareholders to approve an option scheme without telling them all the performance targets. Pretty hard to argue you are interested in performance-related rewards if you don't know what the targets are. I would be interested to see how any fund manager can justify voting for it.

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