Tag: Company-selected measure

What have studies shown so far about PvP disclosure?

In August last year—12 years after the Dodd-Frank mandate— the SEC finally adopted a new rule that requires disclosure of information reflecting the relationship between executive compensation actually paid by a company and the company’s financial performance: the pay-versus-performance rules.   To a significant extent, the approach taken by the SEC in this rulemaking was prescriptive and some of the prescriptive aspects of the rules were quite complex; the SEC opted not to take a “wholly principles-based approach because, among other reasons, such a route would limit comparability across issuers and within issuers’ filings over time, as well as increasing the possibility that some issuers would choose to report only the most favorable information.”  But there was some flexibility built into the new rules. How would companies implement the more flexible disclosure requirements?   That was the question considered by Compensation Advisory Partners, which published a report on the  versions of pay-versus-performance disclosure from the earliest filers among the S&P 500. A similar study of a slightly larger group was conducted by equitymethods. The goal in each case was to try to get a sense of how companies were responding to the new disclosure requirements. What choices were companies making on peer groups, financial measures or “Company-Selected Measures”? How were companies describing the relationship between pay and performance? Just what did the new disclosure look like?