Schneider's ArcelorMittal board seat worth nearly €100,000

ArcelorMittal owes Luxembourg’s former Economy Minister Etienne Schneider nearly €100,000 for a half a year’s service on the company’s board of directors in 2020, the world's largest steel-maker said on Tuesday.

The steel giant could pay Schneider $118,000 (€99,100) for his six months on the board.

His Predecessor Jeannot Krecké earned $78,000 (€65,000) last year before leaving ArcelorMittal's board in June, according to the company's 2020 annual report released on Tuesday. He was paid $742,000 (€623,000) by Luxembourg's largest industrial company in the last five years.

The position on Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal's board, in which Schneider replaced Krecké, was one of at least three similar board positions Schneider landed in the months after stepping down from his government post in February 2020.

Except for last year, Krecké and Michel Wurth were paid identical amounts over the five-year span for their service on the board, which met 11 times last year, ArcelorMittal said. Wurth has spent 42 years in various executive positions with ArcelorMittal and its predecessor. He is now the Luxembourg subsidiary's chairman and also serves on several other company boards.

Payments for the three directors are subject to shareholder approval at ArcelorMittal's annual general meeting in May.

Schneider, 50, was a member last year of ArcelorMittal's Audit & Risk Committee, which reviews internal reports about suspect accounting and auditing. The committee reviewed 168 complaints of alleged fraud in 2020 but found "none of these complaints were found to be significant", the annual report said.

Schneider's landing on the ArcelorMittal board of directors was followed in June by an appointment to the board of Moscow-based Sistema PJSFC. Schneider is expected to earn at least €220,000 annually from Sistema, which is active in the telecommunications, high technology, banking, retail and healthcare sectors and run by Russian oligarch Vladimir Petrovich Yevtushenkov.

In July, Schneider was appointed to the board of directors of Belgian real estate and construction firm Besix Group, which does not report what it pays directors.

ArcelorMittal has sold off assets in recent years to reduce its debt. In the process, its employment shrank by 20% in Europe to 70,953 workers last year, and by almost that percentage overall to 167,743 employees, the company reported.

The steel-maker employed 3,660 workers it employed at the end of 2020 at four plants, its global headquarters and other operations, the company said last week. A deal with Luxembourg's government and labour unions will allow ArcelorMittal to cut its workforce in the Grand Duchy by another 16% in the next five years in exchange for a promised €165 million to €205 million in capital investments.