A couple of years ago, a group of CEOs of major public companies and institutional investors, including Jamie Dimon, Warren Buffett, Larry Fink and Mary Barra, among others, developed a list of “commonsense corporate...more
With over 2,000 companies now having reported pay-ratio information for the 2018 proxy season (through May 10), consultant Equilar says it’s time to take a deep dive into the data to see what trends are discernible. Of...more
In these survey results (courtesy of thecorporatecounsel.net), audit firm Deloitte provides data as of April 10 regarding pay-ratio disclosures for 294 companies in the S&P 500. Interestingly, so far at least, not many of the...more
In this article from the Harvard Business Review, “How to Be a Good Board Chair,” the author, an academic and consultant, discusses good practices for the board chair’s role based on a survey of 200 board chairs from 31...more
What are the early trends in pay-ratio disclosure? Surveys conducted by compensation consultants provide some insights.
A survey conducted by Compensation Advisory Partners LLC of pay-ratio disclosures from 150 companies...more
Equilar has just released the results of an anonymous survey of public companies, with 356 respondents, which asked these companies to indicate the CEO-employee pay ratios they anticipated reporting in their 2018 proxy...more
While more and more institutional holders and asset managers are noisily promoting board diversity among their portfolio companies—including, most recently, the NYC Comptroller and the NYC pension funds—hedge fund activists...more
As discussed in this PubCo post, in November of last year, the U.K. Government published a “Green Paper” on Corporate Governance Reform, which, in the face of rising economic inequality, sought “to consider what changes...more
One of the arguments that has often been used to oppose the Dodd-Frank pay-ratio provision is that the rule does not really provide information that benefits investors; instead, the argument goes, the real animus for the rule...more
In this paper from the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, Board Evaluations and Boardroom Dynamics, the authors suggest that board self-evaluations aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. While, based...more
This year, in his annual letter to corporate CEOs, Laurence D. Fink, CEO of asset manager BlackRock, challenges companies to address the impact of significant political, economic, societal and technological changes on their...more
The NYT reports on an effort by one city to address income inequality by imposing a surtax on companies that pay their CEOs more than 100 times the median pay of their rank-and-file workers. According to the article, on...more
One of the prevailing narratives of the recent Presidential election was that the same gestalt that drove the Brits to vote for Brexit also animated the pro-Trump forces and led to his presidential victory. Why then, when it...more
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about what the data will show when public companies are finally required, in 2018, to disclose their CEO-to-median-employee pay ratios as required by new SEC rules implementing Dodd-Frank. ...more
How to structure executive pay to drive performance over the long term—while avoiding pay levels that would be considered excessive—is a conundrum for compensation committees, consultants, proxy advisory firms and others...more
As reported in the WSJ, a new study from corporate-governance research firm MSCI showed that, over the long term, there was a signficant misalignment between CEO pay and stock-price performance. The study looked at CEO pay...more
A group of CEOs of major public companies and institutional investors, including Jamie Dimon, Warren Buffett, Larry Fink, Mary Barra and Jeff Immelt, among others, have developed a list of “commonsense corporate governance...more
As reported on Sunday in this NYT column by Gretchen Morgenson, recent data shows that boards with more gender diversity pay higher compensation to their CEOs. An Equilar analysis of CEO pay at 100 large companies “found...more
CEOs ain’t misbehavin’? A new study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, “Scoundrels in the C-Suite,” discusses the fallout from and responses to “bad behavior” by CEOs. While “bad behavior” clearly includes...more
It goes without saying that, to many, the sine qua non of executive compensation is performance-based pay. From proxy advisory firms to institutional holders to the drafters of Dodd-Frank, the question of whether CEO...more
According to a new report from ISS, the structure of board leadership plays a significant role in relative levels of CEO compensation. Combining the CEO and board chair titles is still the most prevalent leadership structure...more
CEO Pay, Performance, and Value Sharing, a paper by academics at the Stanford Business School, discusses the disconnect between the perceptions of CEO pay among directors (who set CEO pay) and the public (who ultimately pay...more
The term “board refreshment” may elicit some giggles – no, we’re not talking about shots of The Balvenie 50-Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Speyside, Scotland – but the topic of director tenure is increasingly becoming...more
In “Seven Myths of Boards of Directors,” two academics from Stanford Business School set about debunking some of the most common and persistent expectations regard best practices in board structure, composition and procedure....more
Even though pay-ratio disclosure will not need to appear in proxy statements before 2018, companies are still starting to fret about how their ratios will compare with their peers and whether an unseemly gap might be...more