Allan Gray notes with outrage the financial settlement claimed by Serge Belamant upon his retirement as CEO of Net1. We are very surprised that Mr Belamant was able to negotiate such an extravagant deal after such broad public censure and believe that it is unjustified given current circumstances.
For a number of years we have been concerned about multi-million rand ex-gratia severance payments made to executives and that shareholders are unable to block such payments. We have raised our concerns with the King IV project team, as well as the JSE during their review of the JSE Listings Requirements, and made the recommendation that material severance payments to executives should be subject to a binding vote by shareholders.
As our proposals have not been implemented and we were not privy to the negotiation with Mr Belamant, we regret the settlement reached.