April 5, 2022
Early Trends in Exec Comp – CEO Pay & Pay Ratios Are Up
To complement Semler Brossy’s memo on early say-on-pay results yesterday, here’s a memo from Equilar on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance regarding early trends in executive compensation. Below are some highlights on how executive compensation is shaking out:
– CEO pay is back on the rise – there’s a change in median total direct compensation from $12 million in 2020 to $14.3 million in 2021.
– With CEO pay on the rise, you’ve also got the pay ratio number rising. The CEO pay ratio so far is 245:1 (vs. 192:1 in 2020). Liz previously blogged about how the pay ratio is directly affecting the say-on-pay votes at Kroger – we’ll have to see if failure rates also start climbing compared to what we’re seeing early on.
– Gender pay gap persists even at the highest levels. Median pay for women CEOs in the Equilar 500 was $11.8 million in 2021, vs. $14.5 million for men. I’ve previously blogged about how female executives may ironically be paid less because of benchmarking, and it looks like 2021 continues that trend.
– Emily Sacks-Wilner