Sky Blog
In the ever-evolving world of corporate governance, executive compensation packages are increasingly tied to specific performance metrics and goals. The leading forces behind this trend are institutional investors, major shareholders, and influential proxy advisers such as Institutional Shareholder Services and …
On September 27, 2023, the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) Division of Corporation Finance issued 10 new Compliance & Disclosure Interpretations (C&DIs) relating to the pay-versus-performance (PVP) disclosure rules adopted last year. This new set of C&DIs …
Financial crises are often followed by debates about whether bankers’ incentives helped create distress in the financial sector. We contribute to this debate by documenting the extent to which bankers’ pay contains prudence-related targets, the association between those targets and …
The SEC has approved the clawback listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. As noted previously, the clawback listing standards will take effect on October 2, 2023, and listed companies will have until December 1, 2023 to …
Executive compensation and corporate taxation are both hot button issues, but can they be related? In a recent paper, we examine how CEO bonus contracts reinforce global tax incentives and show that executive pay practices helped drive corporate activity …
Investors are increasingly concerned about a company’s social and environmental impact, but that impact is not as easily assessed as the company’s financial performance, which can be summarized by its “bottom line” (net income) or its stock return. To help …
The rationale behind a number of recent EU legislation changes focusing on corporate governance has been to prioritise a long-term focus on governance through various transparency measures as well as some concrete requirements for action, and on allowing shareholders and …
Corporate insiders engage in “shadow trading” when they use private information about their own firm to trade in the shares of economically connected companies such as suppliers, customers, or competitors. While legal scholars have long recognized that shadow trading can …
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 …
A common argument against stakeholder governance is that it renders managers less accountable while doing little to improve the welfare of stakeholders. Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita call this “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance.” But what if stakeholder governance …
While the world recovers from the worst of the pandemic, the economic, political and social repercussions will continue to play out in ways that, while unpredictable, are in some respects characterized by observable patterns of cause-and-effect and cyclicality. The pendulum …
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 …
What we are doing today [October 28]—implementing the statutory clawbacks mandate—is commendable. But how we are doing it—expansively, inflexibly, and impractically—is not. Accordingly, I cannot vote to adopt this rule.
Section 954 of the Dodd-Frank Act generally requires the Commission
In recent years, the gap between the compensation of CEOs and their vice presidents (VPs) has been increasing, especially equity compensation (i.e., stock and stock options). Scholars have proposed several explanations. First, the pay differential may relate to the varying …
Corporations are increasingly adding the role of Chief Sustainability Officer to their executive teams — at pay levels that place them among the top five Named Executive Officers — reflecting rising recognition of environmental, social and governance risk. In this …
The basic goals of executive compensation have changed little since the advent of large corporations in the late 19thcentury: Provide strong incentives to increase shareholder value, retain key talent, and limit shareholder cost. The literature of compensation consultants …
Stock-option backdating, the practice of changing the reported date of a stock-option grant to an earlier date, proliferated in the 1990s and early 2000s, with nearly one-third of public corporations engaging in it, according to some estimates (Heron and Lie, …
Can investors successfully advocate for improved ESG outcomes at their portfolio companies? We examine whether the introduction of say-on-pay (SOP) laws provides investors with a way to increase the extent to which executive compensation is tied to ESG metrics and …
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 – …