As a part of the federal government's on-going efforts to reform executive compensation practices and to rein in excessive compensation, the Treasury Department drafted and released new legislation (known as the "Investor Protection Act of 2009") on July 16, 2009 concerning shareholder Say-on-Pay and the independence of compensation committees (see also the Treasury's fact sheets on Say-on-Pay and compensation committee independence). This legislation was expected given recent Treasury pronouncements on executive compensation (see our June 18, 2009 and July 17, 2009 blogs). Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), House Financial Services Chairman, declared his support for the legislation and circulated it to other members of the committee with the near-term objective of marking up the legislation this week.

The legislation as now written generally covers the following....

Please see full blog post for more information.