It appears that the large majority of the bonus was due to the value of shares awarded in prior years at depressed prices, which now 'vest' (now in the possession of the recipient) at current higher prices. This is as it should be - the exec only gets in the money when shareholders do similarly. If I was a QAN shareholder, I wouldn't be begrudging the bonus.
However this statement in the Chairman's statement took my eye, especially the bits I put in bold:
Qantas shareholders approve executive remuneration and incentive plans. Approval for the plans underpinning the payments announced today were supported by more than 98 per cent of shareholders.
Last year a friend who was a QAN shareholder asked me to look at the QAN exec pay and bonus structure and at the time I discovered that its incredibly complicated (multi contingent factors). Nothing wrong with that essentially, but not the most transparent. The explanation of the resolution supporting AJ's participation in the Long Term Incentive Plan alone took almost 1.5 pages of the 2013 Notice of Meeting. It appears that the approval of shareholders was not actually required, as the shares to be awarded were to be acquired on-market, but approval was sought anyway (the ASX announcement won't let me copy from the PDF).
I looked at the results of the 2013 meeting and found that overwhelmingly, shares were voted against the resolution in the 'poll' and the againsts were much stronger than any other resolution.
Obviously the meeting passed the resolutions (there are about 1.8 billion shares on issue!), otherwise the Directors wouldn't have been re-elected! However the reason that my eye was drawn to the Chairman's recent statement is that it referred to shareholdERS not shareholdINGS and it referred to the plans underpinning the payments, not the resolutions that crystallised the payments.
A I said, I think AJ earned his bonus and Qantas appears good at with-holding bonuses when hurdles aren't met (not all companies are like this!). Will be interesting to see how the poll goes for this year's resolutions.
