The chief executive of Aviva, Britain’s largest insurer, has resigned following a shareholder revolt over executive pay, the company said yesterday.
The company gave no explanation for the decision by Andrew Moss, who had been CEO since 2007, to step down a week after shareholders voted against the company’s decisions on executive pay and bonuses.
At Aviva’s annual general meeting a week ago, 823 million votes were recorded against the pay plan, or remuneration report, compared with 670 million in favor. Another 152 million votes abstained.
Shareholders were unhappy at a 33 percent drop in the value of shares in the last year.
“We suspect that the latest batch of negative headlines over the Remuneration Report at the AGM was the last straw and Moss had to go,” said Barrie Cornes, analyst at Panmure Gordon & Co. “Few will shed any tears given his handling of the business over the last few years which have seen the shares massively underperform the sector.”
Aviva said chairman-designate John McFarlane would step in as interim CEO and “will immediately assume the task of improving the delivery of shareholder value by the group.”
“He does not underestimate the significance of the challenge but is optimistic of the right result,” Aviva said.
In recent weeks, David Brennan has announced his resignation as CEO of drug maker AstraZeneca and Sly Bailey has decided to leave newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror at the end of the year. Both companies have disappointed investors with declining share prices — down 15 percent in a year at AstraZeneca and 39 percent at Trinity Mirror.
Barclays was also stung by a drop in shareholder support for the bank’s executive compensation. Seventy-three percent of the vote supported Barclays’ plan, down from 90 percent a year earlier.
Barclays CEO Bob Diamond was awarded pay, bonus and deferred shares worth £17.7 million pounds (US$28.7 million) for last year, a year in which the chief executive said the bank’s performance was “unacceptable.”
Before Barclays’ annual general meeting, the bank announced that a chunk of the bonuses to Diamond and finance director Chris Lucas would only be paid out if certain earnings targets are achieved. Diamond stands to lose £1.35 million pounds and Lucas £900,000 if they miss the target.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six