The Advisors' Blog

– Broc Romanek, CompensationStandards.com

Here’s a summary of this Willis Towers Watson memo:

Our analysis of the first 50 FTSE 150 remuneration reports to be published in 2016 reveals more negative voting guidance than last year from the U.K. proxy advisors. And we’ve now seen a handful of U.K. companies fail to gain the support of at least 50% of the votes cast in early 2016 say-on-pay votes.

When compared to the first 50 last year, both Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Institutional Voting Information Service (IVIS) have issued five times more negative voting recommendations:

– ISS “against” recommendations increased from 4% of the first 50 last year to 29% this year.
– IVIS “red” recommendations increased from 3% to 14%.

The top three areas of contention mentioned in negative voting guidance were:

– Unexplained or seemingly unjustified reductions in long-term incentive plan performance targets
– Misalignment of pay and performance in pay outcomes
– Insufficient disclosure of retrospective bonus targets.

Also see this Glass Lewis blog entitled “UK Pay Melee Grows“…