CyberWorks' Li Doesn't Take Salary, Stock Options After Merger
By Cathy Chan
Hong Kong, April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd. said its founder, Richard Li, hasn't taken any form of compensation since the company took over Cable & Wireless HKT Ltd., Hong Kong's dominant phone company, last August.
The company said in its annual report, released yesterday, that it gave its executive directors a HK$633 million ($81.2 million) remuneration package last year, including mostly stock options. Before the merger, CyberWorks offered only HK$8 million in salaries, allowances and options.
``Richard Li has not received any forms of remuneration and would not do so in the foreseeable future,'' said Jenny Fung, a company's spokeswoman. The chairman owns 38.8 percent of CyberWorks.
Li, the son of billionaire Li Ka-shing, engineered the HKT takeover and offered stock options to some of its staff when its shares surged during the Internet frenzy last year. CyberWorks scaled back its Internet plans after its shares lost 82 percent of their value since the merger, and also asked about 2,500 HKT staff to retire early to cut.
Most CyberWorks executive directors exercised a portion of their options last year. Assuming they sold the resulting shares at the date of the exercise of the share options, that would result in a HK$597 million paper profit, or 94 percent of their compensation, the report said.
CyberWorks' spokeswoman said the compensation didn't represent ``take-home pay'' as many directors have elected to hold onto the shares after the exercise of the option. She didn't give details about the total amount of shares the company's directors sold during the year.
CyberWorks closed at HK$2.70, after shedding almost half of its value this year.
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