A group of international investors is threatening to vote to discharge, or give a yellow card, to KPN’s supervisory board for refusing to give them a vote on the company’s lucrative bonus plan.

The Volkskrant reports that a Dutch company supervisory board has never before had to face such a motion over bonuses. A discharge motion is considered to be a final warning before a vote to have the board sacked, the paper says.
The institutional shareholders advisory group RiskMetrics is recommending the measure because it says it is incomprehensible that shareholders are not being given the right of approval.
The bonus plan means that KPN CEO Ad Scheepbouwer can cash in two annual salaries in performance-related share bonuses in 2009 and 2010, the Volkskrant says.
KPN says the salary policy was approved last year.
RiskMetrics was earlier instrumental in getting staffing agency Randstad to withdraw a bonus plan, the Volkskrant says.