Shareholders and their advocates have increasingly viewed the escalation in executive compensation with concern and sometimes anger. In 2007 and 2008, numerous proxy resolutions were introduced to address the subject. Congress held several hearings on excessive pay and heard calls for action.
The burgeoning ire has two roots. For one thing, toward the end of 2006 the Securities and Exchange Commission set tighter rules for corporate proxies requiring more information about the methods used to compile pay packages for top management. But by early 2008, as many proxies came in with a maximum of verbiage masking a minimum of information, some shareholders rebelled.
The sinking economy also stoked shareholder discontent -- especially when executive pay rose even as share prices plummeted. It was hard to find a link between pay and performance; indeed, often the opposite was true. A study by Equilar, a compensation research firm, showed that even as the number and value of performance-based bonuses dropped in 2007, the value and prevalence of discretionary bonuses — ones not tied to performance at all — were up.
And earned or not, paychecks remain high. The average overall compensation in 2007 for chief executives at 200 large companies that had filed proxies by the following March 28 approached $12 million. — Claudia Deutsch (April 4, 2008)
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