"Within annual reports, companies frequently disclose information about how their managers are rewarded in terms of the components of their management compensation plans. For example, within IAS 24 (and AASB 124 within Australia) there is a requirement that information about the components of rewards paid to key management personnel be disclosed within a company's annual report."

Required:

a) Select two large companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) that issue share options as part of their remuneration for key managerial personnel. Use the financial year 2013 annual reports for listed companies to select two such companies, but generally companies within the S&P ASX All Ordinaries Index use stock options as a remuneration mechanism.

You are required to explain in a report for the Chief Accountant of the Australian Securities & Investments Commission how the respective components of the remuneration could be expected to align the interests of the managers with those of the owners and to minimise the contracting costs of the organisation.

In your report you are expected to draw on (not necessarily in the numbered order):

1) the chosen annual reports

2) at least six quality*, scholarly articles from JOURNALS that appear in the Australian Business Deans' Council (2013) ranking of journals -

Business Source Complete (Ebscohost) is a Library database that hosts scholarly journal articles.

3) media reports of the workings in practise of the Corporations Amendment (Improving Accountability on Director and Executive Remuneration) Act 2011.No. 42, which provided shareholders with a ‘say on pay' and which may result in ‘first strike' or ‘second strike' votes by shareholders. - Factiva is a Library database that hosts newspapers).