Shareholders rejected a pay proposal for Jamie Dimon just a few months after being persuaded by the board of JP Morgan & Co to stay on for several years against lucrative incentives.
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The pay packages of Dimon and other leadership teams were approved by only 31% of shareholders, the results announced Tuesday at the bank’s annual meeting. Since 2009 JP Morgan has been seeking investors’ votes on pay packages, and Tuesday’s preliminary result showed that since 2009, most shareholders have declined to back the company’s decision.
Wall Street billionaire Dimon and his deputy Daniel Pinto got massive bonuses last year to stay back but received a significant blow from this defeat. Institutional shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & co, who are prominent shareholders, got angry at the awards given and recommended other investors reject the pay package proposal. The move has sent a message about the top executive pay packets and the poor company’s performance. The stocks of JP Morgan are done by 23% this year, and it is the worst-performing stock among giants on Wall Street.
According to Joe Evangelista, the company’s spokesperson, the JP Morgan board has taken the shareholder’s feedback seriously, and feedback will keep engaging with the investors. The resolution passed is advisory, and the vote is not binding as shareholders typically back any management’s proposals. In this case, the compensation proposal was to be rejected at the annual meeting.
Rejections of such proposals by shareholders can also lead to changes. Last year a shareholder proposal opposed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc and backed by almost half of the shareholders forced the bank to reverse its stand on the effects of the forced arbitration after it was disclosed.
According to Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, a compensation consultancy firm, the approval votes were meager and embarrassing, considering the bank was not shocked by some shareholders opposing the pay hike proposal.
JP Morgan has received more than 90% approvals since 2009 on its compensation plans, the lowest being 61% in the 2015 resolution. At that time, the board had said that it was considering changing the compensation policy for its top executives.
In contrast, the 2021 pay package for the CEO of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, and his deputy package, which included a one-time bonus of $50 million each, was approved by 82% of the shareholders. Advisors Glass Lewis had advised the investors to reject the compensation proposals for executives.
Glass Lewis, while objecting, had pointed out that the $5.2 million option awards to JP Morgan’s CEO and Chairman Dimon was nearly double the regular equity grant given to him in 2021 and was as much as his $84.4 million annual compensation. They also criticized deputy Pinto’s yearly compensation of $53.3 million, including $27.9 million in options awards.
