Shareholders Vote NO on Netflix CEO Pay

The writers’ strike may have had some impact, but it is likely that the majority NO vote on the Netflix executive pay plan was strongly influenced by the ISS recommendation to vote against and the company’s position at number 25 on As You Sow’s most overpaid list. The New York Times reports: Netflix shareholders voted…

Agenda: CEO Pay Cuts

It’s always a mistake to look to year-on-year comparisons for CEO pay, and some negative numbers in the proxy are based on stock price, not a refund to the treasury, so the term “cuts” is not exactly accurate. Underpinned by larger long-term stock and equity packages, median CEO pay at large companies rose 3.1% last…

Timothy Noah: CEOs are a Better Investment than Their Companies

Timothy Noah writes in The New Republic: In 2022, by comparison, the stock market fell even though the larger economy was in good shape. This was a reversal of the Covid spring of 2020, when the economy went into the toilet yet corporate profits zoomed upward. In 2022 the economy recovered briskly and it was…

GE CEO Sees Pay Drop by $14 Million After Board Cancels Stock Awards: Agenda

General Electric last week disclosed that it had cut stock awards planned for Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp, reducing the CEO’s 2022 pay by $14 million. In its annual proxy statement, GE said the company failed to hit certain performance targets that were required for Culp to receive his full payout. His total compensation for…

What Do the New CEO Disclosure Rules Really Reveal? Geoff Colvin at Fortune

Shareholders may be rejoicing this spring to find that, for the first time, proxy statements will report a new, SEC-mandated measure of CEO pay: “compensation actually paid” for the past three years. CEOs may be bracing for headlines announcing never-before-seen numbers. Alas for everyone, these numbers are not what they seem. Proxy statements have reported…

Apple Inc. Allegedly Paid Tim Cook, Other Executives Too Much

Apple Inc. miscalculated the values of performance-based stock compensation for CEO Tim Cook and other executive officers, an institutional investor alleges in advance of an upcoming stockholder vote. Instead of awarding $77.5 million for several executives per fiscal year, Apple awarded about $92.7 million in restricted stock units for FY 2021 and about $94 million…

DOJ Announces New Clawback Policies at the American Bar Association National Institute on White Collar Crime

The Justice Department has a new policy “to shift the burden of corporate malfeasance away from uninvolved shareholders onto those more directly responsible.” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced a pilot program that will (1) make sure every corporate resolution involving the Criminal Division will include a requirement that the resolving company develop compliance-promoting criteria…

As You Sow: Most Overpaid CEOs 2023

As You Sow has released its annual “Most Overpaid CEOs” list for 2023. This is not highest-paid but most overpaid in terms of the value they bring to shareholders. Some of the same names keep turning up, year after year, including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase (Compensation Committee: Linda B. Bammann, Todd A. Combs,…