Investors, including the New York City and State pension funds and the California State Teacher’s Retirement System, are urging shareholders to vote against Mylan (NSDQ:MYL) chairman Robert Coury and 5 other board members at the company’s upcoming annual meeting.
Coury was compensated with more than $97 million last year and some investors aren’t happy about it. The pensions funds are major institutional shareholders – together, they control 4.3 million shares of the EpiPen-maker.
In a letter published earlier this week, the funds said Coury’s compensation last year rang in at $160 million including vesting and other payments. The hefty pay came at a time when the company was dealing with a price hiking scandal and a decline in share price.
State and federal investigators have looked into Mylan’s pricing strategies and last fall the company agreed to dish out $465 million to settle allegations that it overcharged the government for the EpiPen.
The shareholders’ letter pointed out that Mylan shares have declined to around $40 apiece, which is less than half the price that rival Teva Pharmaceutical (NYSE:TEVA) offered for the company in April 2015.
“All of the mudslinging back-and-forth between Mylan and Teva only served to reinforce our concern that Chairman Coury would rather keep his pay and power at Mylan’s helm than likely lose those benefits to Teva cost- and position-cutting,” the investors wrote.
Mylan responded in a statement, saying that Coury’s pay “was granted and earned over his 15-year tenure as CEO and then Executive Chairman or directly relates to his retirement as an executive in 2016 and transition to Non-Executive Chairman.”
In response to questions about the company’s performance, Mylan said “despite industry-wide headwinds in 2016, including volatility and valuation contraction in the generic and specialty pharmaceutical industry, Mylan delivered strong financial and operational results for the year, and outperformed many of its peers.”
Material from Reuters was used in this report.
