Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attends the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 18, 2024.
Halil Saghirkaya | Anadolu | Getty Images
Salesforce Investors voted against the company’s compensation plan for its senior executives after a shareholder advisory group raised concerns about stock-based compensation awarded to Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff.
be Regulatory filings On Monday, the resolution approving the compensation received 339.3 million votes in favour and 404.8 million against at the annual general meeting held on Thursday.
The board had urged shareholders to vote in favor of the resolution, but shareholder advisory firms Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services both recommended investors vote against the resolution.
For fiscal year 2024, Benioff received total compensation of $39.6 million, up from $29.9 million in the prior year. Benioff’s salary remained flat at $1.55 million, but he received additional stock and option compensation and non-equity incentive plan compensation, according to the proxy statement. The latest figure also includes a security fee that had not previously been charged to the company.
In January, the company’s board of directors’ compensation committee awarded Benioff a second long-term stock-based award of $20 million, in recognition of the company’s “successful transformation efforts during the fiscal year and strong financial performance,” among other things.
“Shareholders may rightly be wary of the large discretionary stock grant given to Mr. Benioff in January,” Glass Lewis said in its recommendation, adding that there was a “lack of a sufficiently compelling rationale” behind the grant.
Benioff is already one of Salesforce’s largest shareholders, with a more than 2% stake valued at nearly $6 billion. Glass Lewis said in its proxy statement that additional performance-based restricted stock units and stock options would be “unjustified” because Benioff’s interests are already aligned with those of shareholders.
Votes at the Annual General Meeting are non-binding.
“Our Compensation Committee, which is responsible for designing and administering our executive compensation programs, values the input of our stockholders and will consider the results of this vote when making future executive compensation decisions,” Salesforce’s board of directors said in a company report. power of attorney.
The company declined to comment.
Salesforce shares rose 67% in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, its best performance since 2011.
Net income surged to $4.1 billion from $208 million a year earlier, while sales rose 11% to $34.9 billion from $31.4 billion. Salesforce announced plans to lay off 10% of its workforce in January 2023 after activist investors bought up shares and demanded a better mix of profits and growth. The company said in February it would start paying dividends to shareholders.
Salesforce shares have fallen 2.6% since the beginning of the year.
