Company chairmen will be able to vote undirected proxies on the
remuneration report... eventually.
Recent amendments to the Corporations Act said that chairs both
could and couldn't vote
undirected proxies on the remuneration report. A new Bill aims to
remove the contradiction and make it clear that the chair can vote
undirected proxies on the remuneration report if the proxy
"expressly authorises the chair to exercise the
proxy".
Unfortunately, the new Bill may not be of any use for the
current AGM season. The Bill is still before Parliament. Parliament
does not meet again until 11 October, so the Bill will not come
into effect until mid-October at the very
earliest.
Accordingly, while the Bill is welcome news, companies are still
left with the options that we canvassed in our recent
Alert on this topic:
