이 기사는 2021년 03월 26일 08:05 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS), the second largest shareholder of the domestic gaming company NCSoft, voted against the remuneration limit for directors for the first time in five years.

The NPS voted against the agenda item at the company’s shareholders meeting on Thursday. The pension fund holds an 11.72% stake in NCSoft, nearly on par with the company CEO Kim Taek-jin with 11.97%.

NCSoft said that its revenue, operating profit and pre-tax profit increased by 42%, 72% and 62% respectively in 2020 from a year earlier on a consolidated basis, delivering its best financial performance ever and contributing to an increase in shareholder value. The company also noted that its stock price rose by 72%, outperforming the Kospi’s 30% gain.

The company proposed to maintain the same limits on director compensation as the previous year.

The NPS has frequently voted down remuneration limits for directors. According to the Korea Corporate Governance Service, agenda items that generated the most opposition from the NPS had to do with an appointment of auditors (38.64%), limits on compensation (36.92%) and a policy on severance pay (35.48%) at shareholders meetings of 391 listed companies from 2010 to 2018.

The NPS has been relatively favorable to NCSoft’s compensation for executives. The pension scheme has voted nay to the company's remuneration limit only once since 2014 when the fund started to exercise its shareholder rights more actively.

The NPS even supported an increase in the remuneration limit for directors to 20 billion won ($17 million) from 15 billion won at the last year’s shareholders meeting.

The CEO of the game developer ranked at the top of the wage pyramid, receiving 2.12 billion won in salary and 16.3 billion won in incentives and bonuses of total 20 billion won remuneration limit for directors approved in 2020. This is more than what CJ Group chairman Lee Jay-hyun (12.3 billion won) and Lotte Group chairman Shin Dong-bin (11.2 billion won) received. (Reporting by Choong-hee Won)