The Advisors' Blog

– Broc Romanek, CompensationStandards.com

Last Friday, the WSJ ran this front page, top article – entitled “Banks Owe Billions to Executives” – reporting that the big financial institutions getting capital infusions from the Treasury Department owed their senior executives more than $40 billion for past years’ pay and pensions as of the end of 2007.

The article notes that “Few firms report the size of these debts to their executives. (Goldman is an exception.) In most cases, the Journal calculated them by extrapolating from figures that the firms do have to disclose.”

What the WSJ would be surprised to hear is that many companies don’t even report the size of these debts to their own compensation committees and boards – because they don’t conduct a wealth accumulation analysis! In our “Wealth Accumulation Analysis” Practice Area, we have a number of sample tables to help you get started, including this new “Wealth Accumulation/Full Walk Away Amounts Chart” courtesy of Watson Wyatt and Deloitte Consulting.