The Advisors' Blog

– Broc Romanek, CompensationStandards.com

Over the past week, Citigroup (45%) and KB Home (46%) joined the club of those failing to gain majority support for its say-on-pay. A list of the Form 8-Ks filed by the “failed” companies is posted in our “Say-on-Pay” Practice Area. Citi has not yet filed its Form 8-K reporting the voting results – but did address the failure in its “Citi Blog” (which oddly has no comments after this CEO pay entry). The Citi failure was front-page news for the WSJ, NY Times, etc. and I spoke at an event in NYC last night and it was the hot topic (besides the JOBS Act).

Here’s something that Mark Borges blogged last night: The shock waves from yesterday’s Citigroup “Say on Pay” vote continue to reverberate. For an insightful analysis of how to interpret the vote, see Professor J. Robert Brown’s latest post at his website “The Race of the Bottom.”

This turns out to be Citigroup’s fourth “Say on Pay” vote since 2009 – the first two were as a participant in the Troubled Asset Relief Program. I took at look at the support for the company’s executive compensation program over this entire period, which went from 82% in 2009, 89% in 2010, and 93% in 2011 to just 45% in 2012. So it appears that there was a fairly consistent level of support for the program, which spiked in 2011 (the second consecutive year in which the company’s CEO received essentially nominal compensation – $1 in 2010 and $128,000 in 2009) before the bottom fell out.

Still, it’s difficult to understand how this happened – or whether the company saw it coming, particularly when you look back on its Item 402(b)(1)(vii) disclosure from this year’s Compensation Discussion and Analysis:

As part of the process for making incentive awards to the named executive officers for 2011, the committee considered the most recent “say on pay” non-binding stockholder advisory vote held in April 2011 regarding the named executive officers’ 2010 compensation. The resolution approving 2010 executive compensation received a 92.9% favorable vote. Several key features of the 2010 program for named executive officers are carried forward to this year, such as substantial deferred amounts, performance-based vesting of certain deferred incentive awards, a four-year deferral period, significant stock awards that are subject to clawbacks and a stock ownership commitment, and limitations on perks. To better understand the reasons for the favorable say-on-pay vote and potential stockholder concerns for 2011, management engaged in stockholder outreach at various times during 2011 to discuss executive compensation in the context of Citi’s sustained profitability. In particular, management sought a better understanding of stockholder views on Citi’s disclosure and compensation processes and the priorities of our investors. The committee considered the outcome of the most recent say-on-pay vote and stockholder perspectives generally as factors in the 2011 compensation process in addition to currently applicable regulatory requirements, market considerations, and company and individual performance.