The Advisors' Blog

This blog features wisdom from respected compensation consultants and lawyers

June 14, 2018

Executive Pay Trends

Liz Dunshee

This 26-page study from Meridian describes current pay trends & developments – based on 127 companies in a variety of industries. Here’s some highlights:

– 42% of respondents reported holding CEO base salaries flat for 2018 (17% for other executives). This indicates that many companies may no longer be providing annual base pay increases to CEOs and, instead, are making more periodic adjustments based on significant market movements or other factors.

– Unlike last year, when the majority of respondents reported maintaining LTI grant values from the prior year, this year 54% of respondents reported that 2018 target long-term incentive grant values were greater than 2017 values. The median increase was 9%.

– For annual incentives, a modest decline in the use of an EPS metric was observed, often coupled with a movement to profit metrics not measured on a per share basis.