Portfolio
Privately held financial services business
A newly merged entity needed to consolidate multiple incentive plans and ensure a clear focus on performance, without putting key staff offside. Juno Partners played a vital role as independent advisors to management and the Board.
Background
Our client, a member owned organization and product of a three-way merger, is responsible for vital parts of the financial services backbone in Australia. Formed in response to growing foreign encroachment on its traditional business, the new Board had to quickly establish a new strategic direction and attract & retain a new management team that would be highly motivated to take on the challenges that lay ahead.
The problem
The Board knew that the incentive plans they put in place not only needed to be highly competitive, but also needed to send a clear signal around what mattered most and the expectations that directors had of management.
The challenge was complicated by a number of factors including:
the ownership structure of the business which resembles a mutual where key customers are also shareholders;
legacy reward plans that saw differing levels of opportunity in different parts of the merged business; and
a solution was required rapidly, to allow the business to move forward.
The solution
Juno Partners was engaged to work with management to develop the new senior executive reward program, taking into account short and long term performance, performance metrics, targets and documentation. We also provided independent advice to the Remuneration Committee on the appropriate incentive opportunity to offer participants.
The result was a refined, unified approach to incentives for senior executives, one that took into account short term and long term rewards and that could potentially be cascaded down through the organisation to middle management.
In addition a clear, repeatable process for determining the remuneration of the Group’s most senior executives was put in place.