Stellantis leader’s pay angers shareholders

The massive pay package deal of the CEO of US-European automaker Stellantis changed into blasted via some shareholders and crept its way into the French presidential campaign on Wednesday.

Stellantis says CEO Carlos Tavares is because of acquire 19 million euros ($20.6 million) for 2021, the year that France’s PSA (Peugeot-Citroen-Opel) and Italian-American institution Fiat-Chrysler merged to shape the world’s fourth largest automaker.

Beyond his base salary of two million euros, Tavares is to get 7.5 million euros in performance-based pay, 2.4 million euros in retirement contributions and a 1.7-million-euro bonus related to the success of the merger.

He will also receive 5.6 million euros worth of company shares, according to Stellantis.

But activist investor group Phitrust voted against the remuneration on Tuesday, saying that, according to its own calculations, Tavares could get as much as a whopping 66 million euros in cash and shares — a figure rejected by Stellantis as “wrong”.

“These are obviously not normal figures,” said government spokesman Gabriel Attal.

“We must continue to act at the European level,” he said, citing efforts to impose a minimum tax on big companies or promoting profit-sharing.

Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was also drawn into the issue, saying: “It’s shocking, but less shocking than for others”.

“For once he obtained good results,” said Le Pen, who is facing President Emmanuel Macron in a runoff on April 24 after finishing second in the first round on Sunday.

Stellantis, which was holding its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, posted a net profit of 13.4 billion euros for 2021 despite the car industry seeing its recovery from the Covid-19 crisis crimped by a shortage of semiconductors.

Activist investor group Phitrust, a minority shareholder, took issue with the valuation of the stocks granted to Tavares.

It said that if calculated using the methodology of French market regulators “the total amount of the remuneration of the CEO of Stellantis granted for 2021 would amount to 66 million (euros)”.

The group questioned whether the pay package was “justified for a person who is not the creator of the company, but is only its manager and therefore does not take any risk or financial penalty or assume any personal responsibility, especially as the merger of the two groups is not yet completed?”.

It also asked whether such remuneration turned into socially justified given that Stellantis became likely to want cut jobs due to overcapacity following the merger.

The CFDT union stated the reimbursement package become “hard to swallow for employees who are asked to make competitiveness efforts each day”.