London-listed miner Anglo American has dropped plans to award its bosses multimillion-pound bonuses if its planned $50bn mega-merger with a Canadian rival goes through, after a backlash from its investors.
The FTSE 100 miner had sought shareholder approval for a plan to award its chief executive, Duncan Wanblad, a huge share bonus if the deal to buy Teck Resources to create a copper producing giant is completed.
Other senior executives were also incentivised through the plan, which would have updated long-term awards made in 2024 and 2025 to hand them a minimum of 62.5% of share awards when the merger was finalised.
The company argued that its pay structures needed to be “fully aligned to … a successful delivery of the merger”, which it said would “require exceptional performance by the Anglo American group’s senior management”.
It also said it wanted to “support the retention of senior management through a period of significant change”.
However, it said on Monday that shareholders had “raised a number of concerns” and that it would now abandon the plan.
Wanblad’s share bonus would have been worth about £8.5m, according to the Times.
The move comes after several influential voices objected to the proposed bonuses. Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), the advisory group, recommended investors vote in favour of the merger, but said “the linking of variable incentives to the completion of transactions is not considered good practice” and that the high proposed payout “undermines the other performance criteria”.
Anglo said it would now engage further with investors over director pay before its AGM next year.
The U-turn comes just a day before investors in Anglo and Teck vote on the proposed merger, which if approved would form one of the biggest copper producers in the world.
The deal emerged after Wanblad fought off a series of takeover attempts by its larger rival BHP last year, pushing it to radically restructure the group, including seeking the sale of its famous diamonds business De Beers.
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Anglo, which was founded in 1917 by the entrepreneur Ernest Oppenheimer and also owns the troubled Woodsmith fertiliser mine project in North Yorkshire, rebuffed the £39bn takeover from BHP while Teck rejected an offer from Glencore in 2023 for £16.6bn.
Last month, Anglo rejected another takeover tilt from BHP, as its rival mounted a last-minute attempt to disrupt the planned merger with Teck. Under City takeover rules, BHP is now blocked from making another bid for Anglo for six months unless there is a significant change in circumstances.
If approved, the Anglo-Teck deal would be one of the biggest ever agreed in the mining sector. The largest deal on record is the Glencore-Xstrata merger in May 2013, which was valued at $90bn.
It would also mark a multibillion-dollar bet on the global copper market, with the mineral an important building block for low-carbon technologies such as solar farms and electric cars.
Shares in Anglo American slipped by 0.9% in early trading on Monday, although it is up by more than 40% so far this year.