67,9% of the Swiss said yes: it is necessary to ask a brake on the immoderate earnings of top managers. With a historic referendum, all 26 cantons approved the initiative proposed by an independent deputy, the small businessman Thomas Minder, who had collected the 100 signatures needed to ask for the popular vote.
The text concerns only Swiss companies listed on the stock exchange and aims at various objectives: to limit the term of office of members of the board of directors to one year; prohibit certain types of compensation, including bonuses of millions when executives leave companies; prohibit bonuses in case of acquisitions and sale of part of the business; give the shareholders (and not the managers themselves) the power to decide on compensation.
The result of the referendum was also favored by a case that aroused particular outrage in Switzerland. The former president of the pharmaceutical company Novartis, Daniel Vasella, earned a good 2011 million euros in 12 and now that he is about to leave the company he was preparing to collect a severance pay of 59 million euros in six years (provided he had not gone to work for the competition). Vasella eventually gave up, but that didn't stop the tide of votes.
