Whitbread - AGM 07 July 2020
In June 2020, the Company accomplished a costly rights issue to raise gross proceeds of approximately £1,009 million amid Covid-19 distressed market conditions corresponding to a capital increase of 46%. Earlier in FY19/20, Whitbread untimely returned £2.5bn proceeds from Costa disposal to shareholders and cancelled 49m shares (c. 25% of the capital).
Item 8: Re-elect Mr. Frank Fiskers
ECGS has serious concerns over the executive remuneration since last year which have not been addressed. The new policy, and a new scheme of restricted share award to executive instead of performance-based LTI, were approved by the EGM in December 2019 with a high shareholder dissent gathering only 70% support. Whitbread wrote “We would have preferred a higher level of support for the plan, but given the range of views on the scheme we proposed, this level of support was in line with the Committeens expectation. Since then, the Chairman has undertaken a round of meetings with major shareholders, to understand any residual concerns, which have been fed back to the Committee and the Board. No changes are being proposed as a result.”ECGS does not consider that the Committee has seriously taken into account the shareholder opinion.
However, we recognise that there is a succession at the Remuneration Committee Chairmanship and we will closely monitor further development in the remuneration. If the new Chair does not consider shareholder opinion, ECGS will hold him responsible for these serious shortfalls in remuneration improvement and will recommend to oppose his re-election.
Whitbread is a hospitality company. Co. serves its customers in the U.K. and beyond through its two businesses: Premier Inn and Restaurants; and Costa. Premier Inn is a hotel business, with over 760 hotels and more than 68,000 rooms as of Mar 2 2017. Co.'s hotel are located alongside its own restaurant brands. Co. also have hotels in the Middle East, and Germany, with more hotels in the pipeline. Costa is the coffee shop, with over 2,200 coffee shops in the U.K., over 1,300 stores in 29 international markets and over 6,800 Costa Express self-serve units as of Mar 2 2017.
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