Rio Tinto shareholders rebel against ex-chief executive’s £7.2m bonus – by Jillian Ambrose (The Guardian – May 6, 2021)

https://www.theguardian.com/

Rio Tinto’s shareholders have rebelled against the board’s decision to pay its outgoing chief executive his biggest ever pay packet despite overseeing the destruction of the sacred 46,000-year-old rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia.

Shareholders voted 61% against the miner’s remuneration policy, which handed a £7.2m pay packet to the disgraced former chief executive Jean-Sébastien Jacques for last year, a 20% rise on his total pay the year before, despite the Juukan Gorge scandal.

Jacques agreed to step down from the mining company “by mutual agreement” with Rio Tinto’s board last year after the miner blew up ancient rock shelters, which were highly significant to the area’s traditional owners, Indigenous Australians, so that it could mine better quality iron ore.

The disgraced mining boss, who left the company on 1 January, was stripped of bonuses worth a total of £2.7m following the disaster but will still take home the biggest pay packet for his time as chief executive.

He was also handed an extra £519,000 for his remaining five months of unworked notice period this year, and £215,000 for his unused leave.

For the rest of this article: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/06/rio-tinto-shareholders-rebel-against-ex-chief-executives-72m-bonus