³ÉÈËÓ°Òô

The ongoing AGM season continues to see frustrated investors vote against remuneration reports, ESG progress, and the re-election of non-executive directors. Shipping company Clarkson plc (see:, and Shell plc (see: have this year both fallen victim to increasingly vocal investors. They are, however, not the only companies struggling to placate investors, with Endeavour Mining plc and WPP plc this week also seeing significant dissent.

Endeavour Mining plc’s (Endeavour Mining) AGM saw a considerable revolt against executive pay at its AGM on 24 May 2022, with 29.9% of votes  against its remuneration report despite its new remuneration policy receiving 90.1% support. Although the company gave no reason for the revolt in its disclosed AGM results, the pay packet of Endeavour Mining’s CEO, Sébastien de Montessus, was indeed  at £22,745,000, of which £20,786,000 was from variable pay. It nevertheless did state that it intends to ‘continue to engage with shareholders in the coming months and will publish an update on that engagement within six months of the AGM.’

The company, which is one of the largest gold producers in West Africa, with operations in Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, has managed to avoid the misfortunes associated with some of its mining counterparts because of its operational distance from the ongoing Ukrainian conflict (for more information, see: ). It also avoided any fallout from its own geopolitical risks—a military coup d'état against the Burkina Faso government on 23 January 2022—with the company  on 24 January 2022 ‘that its operations and supply chains in Burkina Faso have not been affected by the current political situation and its mines and projects continue to operate as usual’. Consequently, Endeavour Mining was promoted to the FTSE 100 in the FTSE 350 Q1 2022 reshuffle, just as Russian miners Evraz plc and Polymetal plc fell into the FTSE 250.

WPP plc (WPP) also saw a  at its recent AGM on 24 May 2022, with 26.4% of shareholders voting against the re-election of non-executive director Jasmine Whitbread, who also currently  as board chair of Travis Perkins plc, a non-executive director at Standard Chartered plc, a non-executive director at Compagnie Financière Richemont SA and a visiting fellow at Oxford University. Unsurprisingly, WPP considered that the dissent was due to overboarding concerns, noting that it ‘believes that Jasmine continues to devote sufficient time to discharge her duties. However, the Board takes seriously the results of the AGM and will continue to engage with shareholders to understand and respond to their views on the matter.’

An update on the 2022 AGM season, including results with significant dissent, will be provided in our upcoming Market Tracker AGM Trend Report.