Baytex Energy Trust
Do Baytex directors wear those “hello, my name is” tags to their board meetings? Because it can’t be easy to remember everyone when you see them so infrequently. The company’s board met three times last year — not even once per quarter. This is unchanged from the track record in 2005, when directors also held three board meetings. With a base retainer of $30,000 and an extra $1,500 for each board meeting attended, that works out to about $11,500 per board meeting. Even better, directors were also given 12,000 trust units last year, worth $267,360 on Dec. 31. Throw in a few doughnuts and find me a name tag — I’m signing up.
Baytex Energy trust | BTE.UN-T
1-year chart
Nexen Inc.
We’ve all seen the director bios most companies send shareholders: “Mr. Doe was previously CEO of this and that, and now sits on this and that other board.” Worthy enough, but hardly Nexen-quality disclosure. Nexen adds a skills matrix chart, listing the sorts of key skills directors need — like management, exploration and finance backgrounds — then lists how many Nexen directors actually have these skills. And if that’s not enough, the company also includes a chart listing which directors attended various education-related events during the year. We hear next year Nexen will include directors’ shoe sizes and golf handicaps.
Nexen Inc.| NXY-T
1-year chart
Tenke Mining Corp.
Stock options are still a popular way of giving executives a long-term link to shareholder interests. Note the key words “long term” in that sentence. At Tenke, options granted to executives last year all vested immediately, which means they could be exercised at any time. Perhaps Tenke hasn’t noticed that most other companies have three-year holding periods, and many now add extra performance hurdles for vesting. Tenke says its options align executives “with the longer-term interests of shareholders.” So why doesn’t the board require a holding period? Here’s one guess: directors got 50,000 options each themselves last year.
Tenke Mining was acquired by Lundin Mining in July
