AMP told to disclose payout

Sources said Mr Batchelor and the company's board had been finalising the settlement over the Christmas period, with one suggesting the figure could even be more than $20 million.

AMP has not disclosed the exact amount and is claiming it is a matter still to be resolved. That suggests, as with Mr Trumbull's payout, there may be a dispute between the parties about the final figure.

Mr Batchelor's replacement, Andrew Mohl, has promised to publicly announce the payout before the annual report for 2002 is released in coming months.

Australian Shareholders' Association chairman, Ted Rofe, said it was time for AMP to disclose the payout to Mr Batchelor, given he resigned more than four months ago.

``They have had enough time to work out what the appropriate figure payable under any contract is, or if it's a question of negotiation with the company, again they have had plenty of time to negotiate," Mr Rofe said.

He said investors ``could infer" that AMP was intentionally delaying announcing the figure, either because the expense would flow into this year's results, or that it was waiting for the furore over the group's bad results to die down.

``Any substantial amount paid to a CEO who, I think one can infer, has been sacked because he was not doing a good job would not be acceptable to shareholders," Mr Rofe said.

AMP would honour its pledge to release the amount, a company spokesman said yesterday.

``AMP made a very public commitment to publish the figure as soon as it had been finalised. Nothing has been finalised and anything until then is pure speculation," the spokesman said.

In 2001 Mr Batchelor took home $3.342 million, including $275,000 in super. But it has been reported that a payout calculation could be complicated by the lack of a set time frame on his contract and that new exit provisions were renegotiated shortly before his exit.

The February 26 full-year results announcement is probably Mr Mohl's best opportunity to reveal the figure, when most attention will be on the company's $900 million net loss, the legacy of a series of misguided acquisitions since AMP's demutual-isation and listing in 1998.

After trading around $20 at the time of listing, AMP shares sank to an all-time low of $9.17 on Friday as investors anticipated no rapid turnaround in the struggling UK life operations.

The fall has left Mr Batchelor's options out of the money, but it is also unclear whether he was still granted a portion of the options when the three-year hurdles expired last year or is compensated in any way for them. AMP had endeavoured to extend the hurdle period to give him a chance to earn more of the options, but the company backed down after a public furore.

Mr Trumbull received $13.2 million in entitlements and a damages settlement, but later exercised around $10 million worth of share rights.

He and Mr Batchelor oversaw the acquisitions of GIO, Henderson and NPI, which together exhausted the estimated $7 billion-plus in surplus reserves the life company held on demutualisation.