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CEO pay

Value-Based CEO Equity Grants

By Jin Xu, Pengfei Ye and Cheng Zhang January 10, 2025 by renholding

Equity has become a dominant component of CEO compensation in the past three decades due to its ability to align the interests of managers and shareholders. Each year, a firm can award its CEO either a certain number (share-based) or …

How Much Impact Does Say-on-Pay Have on Executive Compensation?

By John W. Barry December 17, 2024 by renholding

Say-on-pay, an annual, non-binding shareholder vote on CEO compensation, is one of the primary ways of giving shareholders a voice in corporate governance. It is in essence a vote of confidence on the board of directors’ compensation decisions and the …

Israel’s Unique Approach to CEO Pay Governance

By Keren Bar-Hava and Erez Barak December 6, 2024 by renholding

The global debate surrounding CEO compensation remains important and contentious. While many countries have implemented advisory frameworks for say-on-pay votes, Israel has taken a pioneering approach with its binding dual-majority voting system. Introduced in 2012 through Amendment 20 to the …

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Why CEO Pay Gaps Matter for Bank Liquidity Creation and Financial Stability

By Shams Pathan, Mamiza Haq, Chen Zheng and Adrian (Wai Kong) Cheung November 1, 2024 by renholding

Given banks’ importance to global economic stability, how they manage liquidity – their capacity to transform short-term liabilities into long-term assets – plays a pivotal role in supporting growth while maintaining financial resilience. It also entails considerable risk. Creating more …

Musk’s $56 billion: Pay, Incentives, or Rewards?

By Jeffrey L. Coles, Naveen D. Daniel and Lalitha Naveen October 11, 2024 by renholding

A great deal of space has been devoted by the media to discussions relating to the pay of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla.  The media outrage centers around his 2018 pay package, with many of the headlines reporting a whopping …

Does Enhanced Disclosure Curb CEO Pay?

By Ilona Babenko, Benjamin Bennett and Zexi Wang August 10, 2023 by renholding

High CEO pay in the United States has fueled repeated calls for enhanced disclosure of chief executives’ compensation. For example, in 2015 the SEC received over 285,000 comment letters supporting its proposed rule to require disclosure of CEO-employee pay ratios. …

The Effects of SEC Comment Letters on Compensation Contract Efficiency

By Rachel Geoffroy, Sophia Hamm and Brent Schmidt February 14, 2023 by renholding

In a new paper, we examine whether SEC comment letters on deficiencies in compensation disclosure have an impact on executive-compensation “contract efficiency,” meaning the extent to which such contracts align with shareholder interest. The goal of comment letters is not …

What CEOs Really Get Paid under Long-term Incentive Plans

By Zhi Li, Qiyuan Peng and Lingling Wang November 9, 2022 by renholding

U.S. public firms increasingly use long-term performance-based plans to compensate CEOs. Under these plans, CEOs are expected to receive different levels of pay based on how the firm performs relative to various performance goals over multi-year periods. For example, Tesla …

The Implications of Complexity in CEO Pay Packages

By Ana Albuquerque, Mary Ellen Carter, Zhe (Michael) Guo and Luann Lynch June 24, 2022 by renholding

Tying chief executive officer (CEO) pay to performance goals aims to solve a classic principal-agent problem, helping to ensure that the CEO acts in the best interest of shareholders. But can it be too much of a good thing – …

ISS Discusses Growing Disapproval of CEO Pay Proposals

By Brian Johnson May 31, 2022 by renholding
For many companies, 2021 signaled a return to normal business after the COVID-19 pandemic upended the economy and significantly disrupted financial forecasts established at the beginning of 2020. Given the difficulty in meeting financial targets set under short- and long-term
…

Entrenchment or Efficiency? CEO-to-Employee Pay Ratio and the Cost of Debt

By Katsiaryna Salavei Bardos, Steven Kozlowski and Michael Puleo June 30, 2021 by renholding

Critics have argued that the rule requiring companies to disclose the ratio of CEO compensation to employee pay is too expensive and time consuming, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimating the cost to U.S. companies at more than $700 …

Executive Compensation: The Trend Toward One Size Fits All

By Felipe Cabezon January 4, 2021 by renholding

In a new paper, I document a recent and strong standardization in the structure of executive compensation. This standardization is unexpected since, in principle, the optimal incentive contract is a function of many factors that vary among firms. Executives receive …

How Shareholders View CEO Pensions and Deferred Compensation

By Carl Hsin-han Shen and Hao Zhang October 21, 2020 by renholding

Defined-benefit pension plans and deferred compensation are often sizable and important components of CEO pay packages.  In recent years, though, they have prompted controversy among investors, policymakers, and academics. On the one hand, CEO pension and deferred compensation are unsecured …

Davis Polk Discusses the SEC and Inadequate Perk Disclosure

By Robert Cohen, Ning Chiu, Joseph Hall, Betty Moy Huber and Kyoko Takahashi Lin June 10, 2020 by renholding

A $900,000 fine is a reminder for companies to use care in tracking and disclosing all elements of executive compensation.

Between 2015 and 2019, Argo Group International Holding, Ltd. reported some $1.2 million in perks and similar personal benefits paid …

Does Missing Performance Goals Prompt More Opportunistic Insider Trading?

By Meng Gao December 20, 2019 by renholding

Tying executive pay to corporate performance has become increasingly important in creating incentives for corporate managers.  Theoretical models argue that compensation contracts that reward managers contingent on performance, especially performance relative to peer firms, can increase managerial effort (e.g., Holmstrom, …

How Are Bankers Paid?

By Benjamin Bennett, Radhakrishnan Gopalan and Anjan V. Thakor July 9, 2019 by renholding

Bank behavior and how it relates to bank fragility and systemic risk have been in the spotlight since the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Regulators claim that bankers’ compensation structures played a role in encouraging behavior which contributed to the financial crisis. …

ISS Discusses the Seven Venial Sins of Executive Compensation

By John Roe May 24, 2019 by renholding

Compensation disclosures have grown significantly over the last decade (mostly for the better), and they continue to evolve with the ongoing engagement between companies and shareholders. Certain compensation practices are known for raising investor concerns, leading to difficult conversations between …

ISS Offers an Update on U.S. Director Pay

By Kosmas Papadopoulos May 7, 2019 by renholding

In recent years, non-executive director compensation has received attention in the U.S. Increased board workloads, shifts in director compensation structure (away from meeting fees and towards slightly larger base retainers, for instance), a few instances of shareholder litigation in relation …

ISS Offers Insights into How Much CEOs Are Really Paid

By Kosmas Papadopoulos and John Roe April 30, 2019 by renholding

How much compensation does a CEO really end up with? It’s a tough question to answer – the summary compensation table is often cited as what the CEO is paid, but the ultimate value that an executive realized from those …

ISS Discusses the Role of “Economic Value Added” in Pay-for-Performance Analysis

By Bennett Stewart March 28, 2019 by renholding

Performance-based long-term executive compensation is generally determined by a company’s achievements over three-year measurement periods. Total Shareholder Return (TSR), however, doesn’t always accurately reflect the performance of a company or management team during that period. Macroeconomic factors, tax policy, financial …

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