Property blog - Westfield Property Group

In today’s corporate property blog news the listed property sector’s 12 highest-paid chief executives earned a total of $64 million, including bonuses and incentives in a year when listed property companies accounted for half the losses of corporate Australia.

According to company annual reports, the Westfield Group’s Lowy family and Leighton’s Wal King were the highest earners, followed by Peter Brown, chief executive of Queensland-based FKP with a $3.6m package.

But through a spokesman, Mr Brown said he had waived his right to exercise options totalling $2.06m, and consequently his options were cancelled in August.

More than $40 billion was wiped from the market value of Australia’s listed property sector last financial year and last before it recovered from its trough. The sector hit a low in March this year.

“The Lowys ran a huge global company and their packages were justified, but the same cannot be said of someone who runs a domestic, small-cap company,” an investment bank real estate head said.

Leighton’s boss Wal King was one of the highest paid, but he ran an $11bn company with an annual turnover of almost $20bn, fund managers said. “Property tends to attract more colourful characters who generally have an appetite to gain in the upswing and insulate themselves from the downswing,” RiskMetrics director Dean Paatsch said.

At annual general meetings so far this year shareholders have grilled board chairmen on executive pay. The anger of shareholders did not escape David Crawford, chairman of Lend Lease.

Mr Crawford, who had to field shareholders’s questions at the annual general meeting last week, said the board, when considering management incentives, tried to align them with shareholder interests.

“If you look at the incentives granted in 2005 and 2006, they were not vested in 2007 or 2008 (when they fell due) because the executives failed to meet the performance hurdle,” he said.

Source: The Australian
Daniel Kanoon