Executive greed and excess is alive and well in Corporate Agriculture in Australia. Shareholders, staff and company clients at Futuris, the company that owns Elders and has a 43% stake in Australia’s largest cattle producer AAco should be furious that the board has given outed CEO Les Woznicka a $500,000 golden hand shake.
“Les Wozniczka, who presided over a 44 per cent share price slide and a string of profit downgrades in his five-year reign at Futuris Corp, has walked away from the embattled agribusiness group with a $2.5 million golden handshake.”
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The board of Futuris will have to face angry shareholders later this month after it voted to give Mr Woznicka a $500,000 golden handsake. He was effectively sacked earlier this year. Woznicka was paid a whopping $2.28 million dollars in his last year as CEO of Futuris.
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“One analyst labelled the payout “disgusting” while others, who did not want to be named, suggested the bonus looked like a “go quietly payment” and was likely to upset shareholders who had seen the company’s share price eroded to mid-1998 levels.”
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Futuris owns the rural service organization Elders. I know many Elders employees who are honest, descent hard working people. They work enormous hours for the company, be it in saleyadrs, on farms, on the phone to clients half the night. They are active in their local communities as the local Elders man or woman and they get paid a pittance.
If the Elders branch they work in does not make a profit through factors out of the staffs control like ongoing drought etc, the branch is closed and those employees are out of a job.
Farmers and small business people who run down their businesses go broke. Executives who run down a public corporation and destroy shareholder value become fat cats. That is a disgusting state of affairs and the Futuris board deserve public scorn form shareholders, staff and clients alike.
Ooops, there goes any chance of Elders, AAco ever advertising on Agmates, but we don’t give a rip. It’s just plain wrong and we’ll tell it like it is.
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Tags: AAco, Elders, Futuris, Les Wozniczka
