Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman was awarded an astounding R300 million in 2021, the company’s annual report shows.
The group’s recently released annual suite of reports shows the platinum mining executive took home a whopping R300.3 million in remuneration for the year ended in 2021 – an extraordinary amount even compared with his remuneration of R62.73 million in 2020.
While Froneman was awarded a basic salary of R12.42 million in 2021, plus an R7.8 million cash bonus, an added R264 million was paid over to the CEO from conditional share proceeds.
The group’s executive directors and prescribed officers too enjoyed a bumper payday with remuneration, including Froneman’s, totalling R804.9 million – 84% of which resulted from conditional share proceeds.
The company has grown from strength to strength under Froneman, who was appointed CEO in 2013 when the business was formed out of Gold Fields’ old South African gold mines.
Sibanye branched out into platinum group metals [PGMs] through acquisitions of Anglo American’s and Lonmin’s platinum mines in Rustenburg as well as the Stillwater mine in Montana, a deal that expanded the company footprint beyond South Africa but which was highly criticised at the time for being too costly and putting the company at risk of breaching its debt covenants.
All was forgiven when PGM prices started to run in 2020, remaining strong until recently, with rhodium and palladium hitting record highs. The group has enjoyed record profits as a result, while shareholders have enjoyed record dividends. The company share price has increased 300% in the past three years, rising from R14 a share in April 2019 to R55 a share currently.
The surging share price accounts for much of the R300 million remuneration.-fin24
