Planting the seeds for a gold star…
Seed company and agricultural giant Monsanto Co. (MON) has been a repeat visitor to Footnoted.org during its mergers with both Seminis and Delta & Pine Land. Maybe Monsanto’s Board of Directors took note of the goodies its targets were handing out and decided to act. In any event, attached to Monsanto’s recent 10-K was this small exhibit detailing the Company’s new “Recoupment Policy”.
Under the terms of the recoupment policy, if, as a result of “misconduct”, the Company is required to restate its financials due to “noncompliance of the Company with any financial reporting requirement under the securities laws, each of the Company’s ‘Specified Executive Officers’ shall reimburse the Company for any incentive award made to such executive officer on the basis of having met or exceeded specific targets for performance periods” up to a year after the fraudulent filing.
Cook the books and give back that fat bonus — which, according to this other exhibit appended to the 10-K, ranged from $600,000 for the CFO all the way up to almost $2 million for President and CEO Hugh Grant. That’s plenty of reason not to defraud shareholders and it certainly earns a gold star.
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 2 Comments » |
November 4th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Just imagine all the shareholder wealth that could be restored if this were to be applied retroactively to every public company. Sigh!
November 5th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Ummm, look at Section 304 of Sarbanes-Oxley. This has been law applicable to all public companies since 2002. Monsanto’s policy only extends it to a few more officers than the statute does.