Atlanta based beverage giant, Coca-Cola has attracted criticism from investment fund, Wintergreen Advisers for its new pay proposal for management, stating that it was ‘unfathomable’ in light of the company’s slowing growth.
Chief executive of Wintergreen Advisers, David Winters said that the proposed equity plan would transfer around $US13 billion to management over the next four years based on the current stock price and Coca-Cola’s plan to issue a split-adjusted 340 million in shares to employees, The Mercury reports.
"No matter how well a management team performs, it is unfathomable that they would require such astronomical sums of money to provide motivation," Winters wrote in a letter to Coca-Cola’s board members.
Winters believes that the proposal would give shareholders a ‘raw deal’ and has encouraged American billionare investor, Warren Buffett to vote against the plan at Coca-Cola annual meeting on 23 April.
Coca-Cola has since released a statement, saying that Winter’s comment were ‘misinformed’ and that the proposal was consistent with its past practices and that management would need to meet high performance targets in order to receive the full entitlement.