Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has Wells Fargo & Co. in her cross hairs again. Last week newly elected board chair Stephen Black received a letter from the Massachusetts senator asking for details on CEO Charles Scharf’s compensation incentives, including specific metrics regarding governance and regulatory compliance targets and Scharf’s performance against them. On the same…
Tag: ceo pay
Top chief execs ‘paid more in a year than a UK worker gets in a lifetime’ | Executive pay and bonuses | The Guardian
The annual pay of FTSE 100 chief executives fell during the pandemic but still equates to what a key worker would earn in a lifetime, according to a report that highlights the UK’s wage divide and the taxpayer support that has kept some companies afloat. The bosses of companies in the blue-chip share index were…
Executive Stock Sales Are Under Scrutiny. Here’s What Regulators Are Interested In. – WSJ
The current system is one big loophole. You can schedule the sale so the date is fixed, but executives have almost complete control over corporate operations and the release of news. [Emphasis added below] Securities regulators are rethinking rules on popular plans that let corporate executives sell stock without violating insider-trading provisions. The plans—known as…
Agenda – Investors Ask: Are CEOs Special Enough for Special Awards?
Note to boards: Consider the diminishing marginal returns of incentive grants on top of incentive grants. You should not have to bribe a CEO to stay in the job. Companies in the industries hardest hit by the pandemic granted extra long-term incentive awards to executives last year, according to a report from Compensation Advisory Partners….
Proxy Season Review: A Record Number of No Votes on CEO Pay — As You Sow
The 2021 proxy season (proxies voted between 7/1/20 to 6/30/21) was a record breaker on several levels. On one level, 16 companies had failed advisory votes on pay, an increase from the 10 in 2020 and 7 in 2019. On a deeper level, the trends are more remarkable – 32 S&P 500 companies had more…
An Unpersuasive Argument Against ESG Targets in Executive Compensation
In the Wall Street Journal, Alex Edmans argues against ESG targets in incentive compensation. Here’s why he’s wrong (but a little right). He is a little bit right in saying that “The evidence shows that paying for targets encourages executives to hit those targets. But it doesn’t necessarily encourage them to improve performance. The crux…
Australia: CEOs take record hit on bonuses
Bonuses of blue-chip company bosses took the biggest hit on record last year, with nearly a third of ASX 100 CEOs receiving no annual boost to their base salary. Some 31 ASX 100 chiefs received no annual bonus in 2020, double the number from the year before. Among them were those running businesses savaged by…
Agenda – Considering ESG Pay Targets? Europe Offers Clues
Last year, U.S. companies trailed their European peers in tying environmental, social and governance metrics to their executive pay packages. Yet many businesses may need to prepare for regulatory changes requiring American companies to make such disclosures in the future, according to advisory firm Pay Governance LLC. The Pay Governance study showed that 22% of…
Corporate Bosses Make Well-Timed Stock Sales in SEC ‘Blind Spot’ – Bloomberg
This is why we do not believe insiders should be allowed to transfer or sell any stock until 3-5 years after leaving the company. Even scheduled sales do not solve the problem of insider information because the executives control the timing of key announcements. When Abbott Laboratories chief Miles White cashed out $32 million of…
Huge Paydays for C.E.O.s, as Gap With Workers Widened
The New York Times reports on “a blowout year” for CEO pay. Even in a gilded age for executive pay, 2020 was a blowout year. A comprehensive survey of the 200 highest-paid chief executives at public companies conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, an executive compensation consulting firm, revealed some of the biggest…
