Votes on remuneration policy and implementation at annual general meetings are nonbinding advisory votes, which essentially means the board can ignore them.

The votes are more about providing institutional shareholders with an opportunity to show they’re engaged in reining in excess pay levels. They are the investment community’s opportunity for a bit of virtue signalling.

A more worrying consideration, as suggested by PSG (https://www.sharenet.co.za/v3/quickshare.php?scode=PSG) CEO Piet Mouton, is that many of the “no” votes on remuneration are generated automatically by proxy advisory services. Whatever the source, the board never gives the impression it is ignoring these earnest votes...