Infratil seeks fourth annual increase in fee pool for board

Wednesday 24th July 2013 2 Comments

Infratil, New Zealand's largest publicly listed infrastructure investor, wants to increase the pool of fees for its directors by 2.3 percent and also raise fees for directors of some subsidiaries.

The company will ask shareholders at its annual meeting in Wellington next month to increase the fee pool for its directors to $721,215, from $705,000. It will also seek approval to hike director fees at some of its airport, energy, billboard and public transport companies.

Infratil is seeking a fourth annual increase in fees, saying a small increase for each director is appropriate given the growth in size and scope of the company, the time commitments required of directors and the need to ensure remuneration is maintained in line with the market, enabling the company to attract high calibre directors.

The company is seeking to hike by 2.3 percent the fee pool for its Lumo Energy Australia, Infratil Energy Australia, New Zealand Bus, Perth Energy, iSite and Snapper Services units. It wants a 4.3 percent increase in the director pool for Wellington International Airport.

The directors said they support the increase in directors' fees as the businesses are growing in scale and complexity.

Shares in Wellington-based Infratil gained 0.4 percent to $2.48, taking their annual gain so far this year to 8.8 percent.

In the 2013 financial year, Infratil paid management fees of $20.1 million to Morrison & Co Infrastructure Management, which is owned by Wellington-based investment bank HRL Morrison & Co. That's about 0.75 percent of Infratil's $2.68 billion in assets, as at March 31.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

On 25 July 2013 at 7:40 pm M. Pettina said:

When everything is going stale and householders have to count every cent, it's difficult to agree 4.3% increase in director pools!

On 5 August 2013 at 11:26 pm Dave Stanton said:

Pay too much and you encourage self interest and greed. I don't see their lower paid staff getting increases like this ? In fact their increases would equal their annual salary. Do you think that is obscene cause I do.