This year again, Carlos Tavares, the general manager of Stellantis, will be one of the best paid bosses of the CAC 40, competing with two regulars on the podium: Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systèmes, and Daniel Julien, that of Teleperformance.
The shareholders of the car manufacturer, born from the merger of Fiat Chrysler with PSA in January 2021, will be consulted on its remuneration during the general meeting to be held on Thursday April 13, in the afternoon. This will take place by videoconference and will be broadcast from Amsterdam, where the group’s headquarters are located.
In 2022, the envelope granted to the boss for the year of the merger had provoked a revolt of the shareholders who, with 52% of the votes, had rejected it. The vote being only advisory, this had not called into question the payment of 19.1 million euros to Mr. Tavares for the year 2021, nor modified the allocation of deferred compensation in shares likely to increase his emoluments to 66 million euros, according to calculations by Proxinvest, a company which advises shareholders on their voting policy. It was this “bonus” that sparked opposition from shareholders.
Performance criteria
As promised by John Elkann, grandson of Fiat founder Gianni Agnelli and president of Stellantis, the company tried to correct the situation. Not so much on the amounts as by clarifying the performance criteria and giving more detail to the figures. The board of directors has appointed Henri de Castries, the former CEO of the insurer Axa, independent director of Stellantis, to go and explain this remuneration policy. “As such, I spoke to Anglo-Saxon and European investors, and to proxy advisors [des sociétés qui conseillent les actionnaires pour leur politique de vote en assemblée générale] to tell them how we took their downvote into account and changed some elements”he explains.
The median salary of the bosses of companies listed on the CAC 40 is around 5 million euros
Concretely, what is changing? In 2021, Carlos Tavares received a creation bonus from Stellantis of 1.7 million euros. She no longer needs to be. In 2022, he was awarded 14.9 million euros in salaries, bonuses and pensions, including 7.5 million linked to his performance. “His pay is down”, insists Stellantis. Except that he could receive, by 2026, shares whose amount depends on the achievement of his objectives, financial, commercial or technological, and in particular on the stock market price of the group’s share, which brings up the calculating his total compensation at 23.5 million.
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