iNSiGht - Intro

insight corporate Governance Germany
Green Paper aims to set CG standard
DAX board directors are pension millionaires
In times of rising fixed salaries the pension entitlements
of DAX board members are also climbing.
Compensation expert Heinz Evers has worked
out a statement for Handelsblatt showing that
DAX company board members have, on average,
pension rights of eight million euros, thus more
than double within 15 years. The ranks of the
best-secured DAX board members are headed by
Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche, who by the end of
2010, for his past 13 years on the Executive Board
alone, had secured €26 million in entitlements.
Volkswagen boss Martin Winterkorn follows, with
a current pension of €18 million. Ex BASF CEO
Jürgen Hambrecht, on his departure in 2011 after
CAMPUs
In Europe very different rules and standards of corporate governance
may apply. In order to unify them, the EU Commission in April 2011
published the so-called Green Paper on the EU corporate governance
framework, with an eye to identifying the existing need for improvement.
Through July, the Commission then collected opinions on the
Green Paper. The results of the consultation were published in mid
November 2011. Commissioner Daniela Weber-Rey, a partner at
Clifford Chance and a member of the German Corporate Governance
Commission, has summarized the answers. The majority advocated
that consistent corporate governance standards should be introduced
regardless of company size. But they rejected a legally binding quota
for women and want to encourage a voluntary promotion of diversity
here. At the same time, respondents were against a legal limit on
the size of supervisory boards. However, they call for regular external
evaluations and mandatory disclosure, and a mandatory vote on remuneration
policies. A shareholder platform is to improve cross-border coordination and
the flow of information between issuers and shareholders. In addition, the work of proxies
is to be made more transparent. The Commission has announced publication of further
consultation results for early 2012.
14 years on the board, took a €15 million pension
package with him. Josef Ackermann, head of
Deutsche Bank since 2002, will retire in May 2012
with pension rights of €13 million. Evers makes
the criticism that the DAX companies’ total pension
obligations have grown disproportionately to
employee pensions: instead of commonly 50 to 60
percent of the last fixed salary, they are at up to
80 percent today. The pension plan for the eightmember
VW board climbed to €64 million in
2005-2010 and thus rose by 540 percent. In addition,
an increasing burden on groups is emerging:
at Daimler, the Board’s pension entitlements already
add up to €197 million.
issue 02/2012
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