The Advisors' Blog

– Broc Romanek

As reflected in this deck, Deloitte Consulting just completed a review of 293 “S&P 500” companies that have filed their proxies as of April 10th. Here are the highlights:

– Median pay ratio is 153:1
– Median employee’s total annual compensation $70,867
– 21% of companies disclose information about the median employee’s employment status, geographic location and/or role
– Pay ratio and median employee’s total annual compensation varied significantly across industries. As expected, consumer discretionary (i.e., “retail”) had the highest median ratio of 396x and lowest median employee compensation at $32k while utilities had the lowest median ratio of 96x and second highest median employee compensation at $122k)
– Larger companies (in terms of revenue) had higher median ratios than smaller companies; however, the median employee’s pay did not correlate with revenue size
– 51% of companies chose a date other than the fiscal year end as the measurement date
– CACM used to identify the median employee varied significantly, with total cash compensation used by 32%, base pay and wages 23%, W-2 wages 20% and total direct compensation at 18%
– Only 8% used statistical sampling
– Only one company adjusted pay for the cost-of-living (CEO lives in Switzerland)
– 16% of companies added health benefits to total annual compensation
– 81% of companies placed the pay ratio disclosure immediately following the termination tables, while only 4% included it in the CD&A

Also check out the latest from the many pay ratio compilations we have posted in our “Pay Ratio” Practice Area – including the latest Pearl Meyer stats. Finally, it’s your last chance to obtain a 20% early bird discount on our “Pay Ratio & Proxy Disclosure Conference.” Deadline is the end of today, April 20th…