The gold producer Endeavour Mining is to claw back more than $29m in pay and awards after firing its chief executive this month for alleged “serious misconduct” over allegations of a multimillion-dollar “irregular payment”.
London-headquartered Endeavour said on Thursday that Sébastien de Montessus, who had led the FTSE 100 company since 2016, would be forced to forfeit $29.1m (£22.9m) in remuneration.
De Montessus, who was the highest paid FTSE 100 chief executive in 2021, will receive no salary, pension, benefits, bonus or share awards for the 2023 and 2024 financial years.
Endeavour said this amounted to $17.6m. Its remuneration committee also exercised a “clawback” relating to 2021 and 2022, amounting to a further $11.5m.
Part of that will be offset against previous long-term incentive plan awards, but De Montessus will have to personally pay back $2.7m.
De Montessus said: “I am disappointed with the way this matter has been handled and that I have not been given an opportunity to make proper representations to either the board or the remuneration committee.”
This month, Endeavour announced the departure of De Montessus, who was also the president of Endeavour, with “immediate effect”.
The company said it was also investigating whistleblower allegations made against De Montessus “relating to his personal conduct with colleagues”.
After the announcement, shares in the company dropped 12%, making it the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 that day.
Endeavour, which operates four mines in west Africa including in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, said the investigation into the payment related to an instruction of $5.9m made by Montessus that it discovered “in the course of a review of acquisitions and disposals”.
Montessus has said that the payment was made in 2021 and related to a creditor of Endeavour to “offset” an amount owed to the company to “pay for essential security equipment to protect our partners and employees in a conflict zone”.
“The decision had no additional cost to the company and did not benefit me personally in any way,” he said in a statement after Endeavour’s announcement of his sacking and investigations. “I omitted to inform the board that I had arranged for this offset, which I have freely accepted was a lapse in judgment.”
Endeavour, which has appointed the veteran mining executive Ian Cockerill as chief executive, said its investigation into the allegedly irregular payment was continuing.
Montessus said the whistleblower allegations relating to his personal conduct were unfounded and should not have been made public by the company.
“An independent investigation by Linklaters did not uphold any of the personal conduct allegations,” he said. “The inclusion of that allegation by Endeavour Mining in its RNS [stock market] statement on Thursday [4 January] was utterly misleading. The legal position is now being assessed.”
In December, BP formally dismissed its chief executive, Bernard Looney, with immediate effect, and said it would deny him more than £32m in pay and share awards, over “serious misconduct” relating to his past relationships with colleagues.
