Despite rumours to the contrary, William Morrison shareholders are not pressing for the appointment of non-executive directors through an extraordinary meeting, according to Martin Ackroyd, finance director at the supermarket chain.
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William Morrison is the only one out of the 350 companies in the FTSE main index that does not appoint non-executives to the board.
Ackroyd explained that this is because they are “bloody expensive” things to have. “It would cost £90,000-a-year membership fee for us to join the non-executive club, for one to come in and work 60 hours a year. If someone is going to be paid £1,500 an hour, they need to earn it and work damned hard,” he pointed out.
“What do they want?” he asked: “Us to go down the road to a club, invite people to join our board as non-executives so that they can then award directors huge bonuses and pay increases? As an individual, I’d probably love that but as a guardian of a company’s finances, I feel it is out of step.”
However, Ackroyd maintained that, “there was no threat of any description […] nobody has called us about an EGM, and they would normally expect the company to pay for it.”
“We have had a few letters reminding us about corporate governance rules on non-executive directors, but that’s it,” he insisted, adding that the similarity of the letters in question suggested that they had all been written at the behest of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).
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By GlobalData“The NAPF is a self-appointed body, which is no different than John Prescott going out on the hoardings and telling you to vote Labour, and punching you if you don’t,” he added: “This is probably our punch.”
