IGO wants to lift its ceiling on board pay, despite Western Areas takeover disaster

[Pelican Press 0]

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IGO wants to lift its ceiling on board pay, despite Western Areas takeover disaster

IGO will ask shareholders to approve increase the fee pool for its directors, despite the board’s failures in overseeing the nickel and lithium miner’s disastrous Western Areas takeover.

Having paid more to chairman Michael Nossal and his fellow non-executive directors in the 2024 financial year, IGO is now seeking approval from next month’s annual general meeting in Perth to increase the ceiling on annual cumulative board fees by $250,000 to $2m.

IGO says the proposed increase is “reasonable and appropriate”.

The fee pool was increased by a similar amount in 2022 from $1.5m, so it would have grown by one-third inside two years if the resolution is approved.

The 2022 Western Areas deal is arguably the worst negotiated in recent years, with IGO writing off the $1.3 billion it paid for the nickel miner after higher than forecast operating and capital costs, combined with falling metal prices, scuppered the value of the business inside a year.

An independent review commissioned last year by the IGO board found the transaction was littered with failures across pricing, due diligence and integration.

The review said the takeover was overvalued because of flawed assumptions and marked by poor due diligence and risk assessment.

The financial damage was further exacerbated by “limited” information and pre-project planning around the integration of Western Areas’ Cosmos nickel mine, near Leinster, which has since been mothballed with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

Chairman Michael Nossal told ****** shareholders at the 2023 AGM that “we all have to take accountability together and wear the consequences of that”.

The board ******** unchanged since then, though Mr Nossal told shareholders in a limited reference to the deal in the 2024 annual report in August that IGO had made “substantive changes to processes, safeguards and risk management” as a result of the review, which has not been made public.

According to the annual report, Mr Nossal – IGO’s chair since July 2021 – pocketed $292,500 in cash fees in the 2024 financial year, up $40,000 on a year earlier. Cumulative board fees were 26 per cent higher at $1.42m – still well below the new ceiling of $2m proposed by IGO.

However, the company argued in the notice of meeting that the ******* fee pool would ensure its directors were “appropriately” paid, that it was able to pay them more if needed and that it was able to hire new suitably experienced board members when required.

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