This Glass Lewis blog discusses one-time CEO awards at major U.S. banks in 2025 and assesses their impact on pay levels and peer benchmarking. It reports:

During fiscal year 2025, several large U.S. banks granted significant one-time awards (OTA) to their CEOs, primarily for retention, leadership continuity and transaction-related considerations. The awards contributed to a substantial increase in average CEO compensation among the 19 S&P 500 banks reviewed, while median compensation remained relatively stable.

[T]he aggregate value for grants across the sector [rose] from a little over $100 million in FY 2023 to above $430 million in FY 2025, representing an approximate 311% increase.

[J]ust five of the twelve banks that granted one-time awards in FY 2025 [accounted] for nearly 87% (approximately $379 million) of the aggregate recorded value across the sector.

The blog says that it’s common for average pay to exceed median because of a few large packages, but in 2025 the gap between the average and median became especially wide: “the average rose approximately 86% from the prior year, while the median was essentially unchanged.” Glass Lewis shares its concerns about the impact on benchmarking:

This has a practical benchmarking implication. If a company relies on the average of a peer group or cites the average as evidence that its CEO’s pay package is below market, a few OTA-inflated pay outcomes can create an artificially high reference point. Indeed, the FY 2025 average reflected several exceptional compensation outcomes and was therefore less representative of the compensation reported by a typical company in the sample.

The blog illustrates this benchmarking implication with an example.

[One] company disclosed that 80% of its principal peers had granted special CEO awards during the preceding four years and that the average award value was approximately $60.65 million. [The company] then approved an award with an approved value of $60 million. That does not mean the approved value was selected mechanically, but the near match is difficult to ignore. A practice initially presented as exceptional can start to look ordinary once enough peers have adopted it.

It goes on to highlight five awards and explains that the company in the group with the highest say-on-pay support (83%) granted an award with unique features (tied to a transaction and integration) compared to the others (retention-focused, with 70% support or less). It also points out that one-time awards are up outside the banking sector as well and that there hasn’t been an overall decline in say-on-pay support. Say-on-pay challenges are more likely “when award values are exceptionally large, the evidence of an immediate retention threat is limited, or the award lacks objective performance conditions.”

– Meredith Ervine