Mark Weldon. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The stock exchange has allocated its chief executive $3.6 million worth of shares in the company.
Mark Weldon has now boosted his stake in the NZX New Zealand Exchange to 6.51 per cent.
The company said in a substantial shareholder notice on Friday that it had issued 349,657
fully-paid-up shares to Weldon at a price of $10.31 each. The shares were paid for in cash, it said.
They are part of the company's CEO share scheme, and are held by Weldon through Tane Nominees.
He now has 1,601,789 shares in the company, including a further 1,252,132 held through ASB Nominees.
The company's shares were trading on Friday at $8.90, down 5c, valuing his stake at $14.2 million.
Earlier this year, shareholders forced NZX to dump a proposed remuneration package for Weldon which would have allowed him to take a stake of up to 10 per cent in the company.
NZX chairman Simon Allen said in August his board would put together a revised package, with higher performance targets, and allow Weldon to amass a smaller amount of the company, up to 6.4 per cent.
Allen said critics felt the previous plan had too low a performance hurdle, and that it should be based on earnings growth, not shareholder returns which are based on share price increases and dividends.
Two years earlier, in December 2005, the NZX announced it wanted to boost Weldon's pay package by up to $42,000. At the time, he was already receiving up to $850,000 a year, including a base salary of $425,000, with a potential bonus payment of up to the same amount.
NZX said at that time Weldon also had incentive shares available to him under the CEO share scheme.
A leading international investment researcher said last week that New Zealand's stock exchange was among the world's 10 worst-performing exchanges during 2007.
Lipper, a fund research unit of Reuters Group, listed the NZX as its eighth-worst performing stock market, with a total return of minus 1 per cent on its benchmark index for the year.
Lipper data showed that China, Brazil and India soared ahead, while Ireland, Brussels and New Zealand ranked among the 10 worst performing exchanges, London's Telegraph newspaper reported.
- NZPA
