Barrick Gold Corp.awarded Executive Chairman John Thornton US$3.08 million as a whole compensation, 76 per cent under last year, after he gave up his bonus within the wake of investor criticism of pay packages at the world’s largest gold producer.
Thornton, 62, received a salary of US$2.5 million, US$204,090 in other compensation and a pension value of US$375,000, the Toronto-based miner said Thursday inside a regulatory filing. Thornton forfeited US$3.4 million of incentives for the year, the organization said. The compensation compares with US$12.9 million in 2014, including US$9.5 million of incentive pay.
Thornton “elected to forfeit all of the incentive compensation earned for 2015 in order to better reflect the experience of our shareholders last year,” Barrick said within the filing.
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Under Scrutiny
Barrick’s compensation and governance received scrutiny after the company revealed in 2013 that Thornton, an old Goldman Sachs Group Inc. president, received an US$11.9 million signing bonus. The organization has already overhauled the way it determines senior executives’ pay, though this past year it still drew the ire of three of Canada’s largest pension funds on executive pay and corporate governance.
Last month, Thornton said the company has responded by changing the actual way it pays executives.
“When we said last year we will fix this, we’ll repair it,” Thornton said within an interview in New York at the end of February. “Actually we’ve fixed it.”
According to the filing, Barrick President Kelvin Dushnisky was awarded US$4.35 million in compensation for 2015, together with a salary of US$938,400, share-based awards of US$1.58 million and US$1.41 million in incentive compensation. The total is down 3.1 percent from 2014, when Dushnisky was awarded US$4.48 million for sharing a co-president role with James Gowans.
‘Interesting’ Timing
Barrick has been working to lessen its debt, which swelled to as high as US$15.8 billion in 2013, after the company expanded its footprint using the $7.3 billion purchase this year of copper producer Equinox Minerals Ltd. Since 2013, Barrick has cut assets, jobs and charges and adopted a decentralized managerial model more similar to a tech firm than the usual miner. Debt was down to US$10 billion by Dec. 31 and also the clients are seeking to halve that in the “medium term.”
It’s “interesting” Thornton’s pay reduced each year once the company improved its performance, said Ken Hoffman, a senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
“He’s kind of saved the core from the company,” Hoffman said Thursday within an interview on Bloomberg TV Canada. “He’s reduced your debt load tremendously, he’s done some deals in order to sort-of reshape the corporation, and it’s been year up to now the single-best performing major.”
–With the help of Danielle Bochove.
Bloomberg News
