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Tokyo: Sony Corp. shareholders on Friday voted down a proposal to
force the electronics giant to reveal how much it pays top
executives including chief executive Howard Stringer.
For a seventh year running, a shareholder
advocacy group called on Sony to disclose the individual wages of
top management.
Currently it only reports their aggregate
pay—a policy that Stringer insisted was “appropriate.”
Despite growing shareholder activism in Japan,
only 39.7 percent of Sony shareholders supported the proposal at
their annual meeting, far short of the two-thirds majority needed to
force the company to comply.
This year’s annual shareholder meetings in
Japan are being closely watched for signs of investors flexing their
muscles.
Shareholders in leading wig maker Aderans
Holdings last month refused to reappoint senior managers because of
the company’s slack performance.
Sony has axed thousands of jobs and shed
non-core assets since Stringer, a Welsh-born US citizen, took over
in 2005 as its first foreign head.
“Although we have made great progress in our
recovery, Sony is still on the road to transformation,” Stringer
told shareholders Friday.
“Our utmost priority is to restore
profitability in our television business,” he said.
“The business environment surrounding Sony is
becoming increasingly tough” but it would strive to make an
operating profit equivalent to 5 percent of its revenue, which it
failed to do in the financial year to March, he said.
-- AFP
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