The Advisors' Blog

I blogged earlier this month about how say-on-pay is going in the 2022 proxy season. As a recap, we saw 3 companies failing from the Russell 3000 (so a 2.2% failure rate) and 8.9% of Russell 3000 companies received an “Against” recommendation from ISS as of March 31.

Here’s the latest report from Semler Brossy on say-on-pay results as of April 14.

– Three Russell 3000 companies (2.1%) failed Say on Pay thus far in 2022. No companies failed since our last report.

– The percentage of Russell 3000 companies receiving greater than 90% support (71%) is similar to the percentage at this time last year (73%).

– The current Russell 3000 average vote result of 90.1% is similar to the index’s average vote last year, while the current S&P 500 average vote result of 85.6% remains well below last year’s average.

– The average Russell 3000 vote result thus far is 450 basis points higher than the average S&P 500 vote result; however, only 35 S&P 500 companies have held a Say on Pay vote thus far in 2022.

– 6% of Russell 3000 companies and 11.4% of S&P 500 companies have received an ISS “Against” recommendation thus far in 2022.

There’s been a lot of publicity around the pay inequality & high CEO pay ratios this season – that hasn’t translated into say-on-pay failures as of mid-April. With only 35 S&P 500 companies having held a say-on-pay vote so far, we’ve still got a long ways to go.  As always, we’ll keep posting these stats in our “Say-on-Pay” Practice Area.

– Emily Sacks-Wilner