Australia's Qantas lashed by shareholders after turbulent year

investing.com:

By Byron Kaye

(Reuters) -Shareholders of Australia's Qantas Airways voted overwhelmingly to reject the airline's executive pay plans at its annual meeting on Friday, a final show of frustration after one of the company's most reputationally damaging years.

More than four-fifths of the votes in a resolution to adopt the remuneration report came in against it, according to tally of proxies shown at the meeting, easily surpassing the 25% needed. It was the first time the high-profile company has received a so-called strike.

The vote has no immediate consequences, but if repeated a second year, under Australian law it gives shareholders the right to hold another vote on whether to remove the board.

«This is obviously a very clear message from shareholders,» Chairman Richard Goyder told the meeting in Melbourne after two and a half hours of shareholder questions about customer service and workplace controversies at the airline.

Jacqueline Hey, chair of Qantas' remuneration committee, added: «We hear your feedback and understand your frustration; we've taken some actions already and we are working to implement further changes to restore your trust».

Among those actions were changes in the bonus structure to increase the weighting of customer experience, Hey said.

Long one of Australia's most respected brands, Qantas saw its CEO retire early and Goyder quit, effective 2024, after the competition regulator sued the airline in August over selling tickets to thousands of already-cancelled flights after borders reopened in 2022. Qantas is defending the lawsuit.

The High Court also found Qantas sacked 1,700 ground staff illegally in 2020 to prevent industrial organising, while the company was collecting hundreds of millions of