Steinhoff International Holdings, the retailer that’s wiped out more than $12 billion of value since an accounting scandal exploded in December, plans to reward directors for having to do more work than usual.
Steve Booysen, head of Steinhoff’s audit and risk committee and part of the supervisory board’s independent committee, is due a once-off payment of €200,000 “to cover the additional work undertaken during the period since the accounting irregularities were identified,” the Frankfurt- and Johannesburg-listed company said on its website.
Steinhoff proposed that Heather Sonn and Johan van Zyl , also part of the independent committee, are paid an extra €200,000 and €100,000, respectively, because of the “exceptional demands” being placed on them.
Steinhoff shares cratered when the retailer announced December 5 that irregularities would force it to restate financial results and Chief Executive Officer Markus Jooste quit.
Eight banks have said they lost more than $1 billion on loans linked to Steinhoff. The owner of retail chains including Conforama in France and Poundland in the UK has had to sell its private jet, dispose of stakes in various companies, offload a flagship store in Vienna and negotiate with banks in order to stay afloat.
There’s More
All members of Steinhoff’s supervisory board should get paid for extra meetings, the company said in the notice ahead of its annual shareholder gathering on April 20 in Amsterdam.
The retailer is proposing the chairman gets €4,000 per meeting and the members receive €3,000 per meeting.
Further, Theunie Lategan and former lead independent director Len Konar, who both resigned from the supervisory board at the end of February, should each be paid an additional €40,000, it said.
The auditors and the audit committee failed to identify Jooste’s actions and “we do not believe that he could have masterminded this without assistance,” David Levinson, an analyst at Avior Capital Markets, said in a note to clients this month.
“Red flags internally should have been raised earlier,” he said. “The situation at the company was enabled by undue power dynamics within the board. The board failures appear exacerbated by insufficient director independence.”
The retailer, which has plummeted more than 90% since the accounting scandal erupted, fell as much as 10% to a record low in Frankfurt on Friday. It was 3.5% lower at €0.21 as of 12:27 pm in Germany.
Booysen, Sonn and Van Zyl were “required to make extraordinary time commitments and be readily available for unscheduled ad-hoc meetings, deal with stakeholders, such as regulators, investors and shareholders,” Steinhoff said in an emailed response to questions.
“The proposed amounts are in recognition of the extraordinary effort that they have made, and continue to make, in order to stabilise the company and restore value to investors.”
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