Shareholders registered a protest vote after a period of poor returns at the Canadian software company
Author of the article:
Bloomberg News
Ana Pereira
A Blackberry office tower in Irvine, California. Photo by REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Shareholders of BlackBerry Ltd. voted against the board’s approach to paying executives, registering a protest vote after a period of poor returns at the Canadian software company.
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A majority of the shares cast at Wednesday’s annual meeting were voted against the company’s compensation plan in a so-called “say on pay” resolution. BlackBerry didn’t give the percentages voting for and against. Last year, the company received 59 per cent support in a similar vote on compensation.
BlackBerry was briefly caught up in last year’s meme-stock craze — the shares more than doubled in January 2021 — before giving up those gains. The shares remain lower than they were in November 2013, the month John Chen became chief executive officer with a plan to focus on software instead of smartphones.
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Article content Shareholders’ discontent stems in part from the tens of millions of dollars in stock awards Chen has received over the years even as the company struggled to grow. The temporary rise in the share price during the meme-stock rally meant that Chen received performance share units, or PSUs, despite its subsequent tumble.
Shareholder advisory firms Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. both recommended that investors vote against the plan. The shareholder ballot is advisory, meaning it isn’t binding on the board.
In February, Chen filed a plan with regulators to sell as many as 2.9 million shares of BlackBerry, or nearly a third of his holdings, for “personal financial planning purposes.”
Bloomberg.com
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