Shareholders Told to Reconsider NIS 100,000 Monthly Pay for Rami Levy's Wife

Adina Levy, whose husband Rami Levy is the controlling shareholder of his eponymous supermarket chain, will have to wait until the company’s shareholders meet again for a revote on her NIS 100,000 monthly salary as company treasurer, after the Israel Securities Authority intervened in the matter.

The ISA attended a shareholders’ meeting on December 31 of last year, at which Ms. Levy’s employment terms were put to a vote. It concluded that the vote was not properly conducted because among the participating shareholders were two interested parties, Bikurei Sadeh and H. Levy − two companies with business ties to the supermarket chain.

As a result, the securities authority insisted that the vote on her employment conditions was invalid. In response, the Rami Levy chain said it sticks by its position that the December vote was valid, but, to be on the safe side, it would shortly issue a meeting notice for a revote on the issue. When it came to a vote in December, shareholders approved the NIS 100,000 salary for Ms. Levy as the company treasurer for the next three years, but it only squeaked through with 50.4% support.

Ms. Levy has been the firm’s treasurer since 2007. In agreeing to the NIS 100,000 salary, she actually consented to a 70% pay cut over the NIS 300,000 per month that she had been receiving earlier. The reduction followed a change in the corporation laws and came in the wake of the 2011 social-justice protests, which focused on the costs of living, including the price of food.

Although the new salary for Adina Levy passed, it was opposed by all of the major Israeli institutional investors with shares in Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing. It was supported, however, by oversees investors, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of New York.

Ms. Levy’s revised salary as treasurer would still be out of line with other senior executive salaries at the company. According to the company’s financial reports, the general counsel, for example, earns just over NIS 34,000 per month, while the operations director earns NIS 63,000.

Israeli institutional investors told TheMarker that they considered a salary of NIS 100,000 for the company treasurer “astronomical.”