For 30th year.
Harvey Norman co-founder and executive chairman, Gerry Harvey has been re-elected to the board with a majority vote of 84.83% at the company’s annual general meeting held on Thursday. Chief financial officer, Chris Mentis and director, Graham Paton were also re-elected to the board.
However, 23.29% of shareholder votes were against the adoption of its remuneration report, narrowly avoiding a ‘first strike’ that requires 25% of votes. Two consecutive strikes can lead to a potential board spill.
Prior to the AGM, the Australian Shareholders Association (ASA) shared its intentions to vote against Harvey, Mentis and Paton.
“We would usually always vote in favour or a company founder and or a majority shareholder. However in this case as Harvey leads a board that through the intentional lack of renewal is about to be totally non- independent we will vote our undirected proxies against him” the ASA said.
“In line with the corporate governance of most of the ASX 200, realise that after 12 years on a board you can no longer be considered to be independent. As this is a board that will be totally non independent when Paton reaches 12 years in a few months, we will vote our undirected proxies against this resolution.”