Category: Executive Compensation
Does merit pay work?
by Cydney Posner Most employers in North America don’t think so, according to CFO.com, reporting on a new survey by the compensation consulting firm, Willis Towers Watson. The survey, conducted in the last quarter of 2015, was directed at 150 large and midsize U.S. and Canadian employers. The survey reached […]
Will the SEC finally provide some relief from the nearly incomprehensible proxy statement requirement for a New Plan Benefits Table?
by Cydney Posner Keith Higgins, Director of Corp Fin, hinted that he might be giving us a welcome gift in the future: a revision of Item 10 of Schedule 14A, the proxy statement – in my view, a component of the disclosure rules that has too long been ignored and […]
Highlights from panels with current and former staff of Corp Fin
by Cydney Posner Below are some highlights (from my notes) of the PLI Securities Regulation Institute panel discussions Thursday and Friday with the Corp Fin staff (Keith Higgins, Shelley Parratt, David Fredrickson, Michele Anderson, Karen Garnett) as well as a number of some former staffers, plus some additional discussion from […]
U.S. Chamber of Commerce won’t challenge pay-ratio rules — at least for now — and will focus instead on conflict minerals challenge
by Cydney Posner The WSJ is reporting that, contrary to all expectations (including my own), “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce isn’t planning to mount a legal challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s pay ratio rule.”
Reputation management experts advise how to manage a company’s reputation in light of pay-ratio disclosure
by Cydney Posner 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 detrimental to their reputations and unsettle their work forces. In this […]
SEC’s Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies recommends harmonizing and expanding disclosure accommodations for small companies
by Cydney Posner At a meeting of the SEC’s Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies at the end of last month, the Committee approved a set of Recommendations about Expanding Simplified Disclosure for Smaller Issuers. A key focus underlying the recommendations is some effort at harmonizing the jumble of […]
Is TSR really the best performance metric?
by Cydney Posner While TSR (total shareholder return) is increasingly used a performance metric for executive compensation, a study by Cornell University and Pearl Meyer, an executive compensation consultant, showed no real correlation to improvements in company performance, reports the WSJ. In the study, over 48% of S&P 500 companies […]
Is a three-year performance period for restricted stock too short?
by Cydney Posner Some consultants say yes. In this article, posted on CFO.com, two consultants argue that the use of the three-year time horizon frequently associated with performance-based restricted stock grants may not really be long enough, especially where the performance measure is relative total shareholder return (TSR). In fact, […]
Institutional shareholders weigh in on pay-ratio disclosure
by Cydney Posner In this article from Bloomberg, institutional investors and proxy advisory firms expressed their views on the value of the SEC’s new pay-ratio disclosure (which, for most companies, will not be reported until the 2018 proxy statement). (See this PubCo post and this Cooley Alert, SEC Adopts Final Pay-Ratio […]
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