January 4, 2016
Poll: Possible Downward Trend in Bonus Payouts for 2015 Performance
– Broc Romanek, CompensationStandards.com
Here’s an excerpt from this Towers Watson memo:
To help companies prepare for year-end and plan for the 2016 proxy season, Towers Watson hosted a webcast December 8 to review the latest trends in executive pay design, pay-for-performance alignment and other key issues companies may face in the coming year. We explored the broadly declining performance results across most sectors of the economy and polled the webcast participants about their preliminary expectations regarding the impact of this year’s performance on 2015 bonuses and 2016 long-term incentive grants. Executive compensation professionals in more than 100 large and midsize companies participated in the poll.
The poll results, shown at the far right in Figure 1, reflect a more pessimistic view of bonuses than we observed from mid-year filers, which in turn were lower than the robust payout pattern of 2014. Note that the 2014 data reflect actual bonuses paid to about 1,000 S&P 1500 CEOs for 2014 performance, while the 2015 mid-year data include actual bonuses paid to CEOs in about 90 companies with fiscal years ending after June 30.