Today is our “17th Annual Executive Compensation Conference” – Monday & Tuesday were our “Proxy Disclosure Conference.” For those who haven’t been attending the conferences – or for those who have and want to watch again – we ran a special tribute video yesterday to honor Marty Dunn. Marty was a legend in our community and is deeply missed.
You can still register online to get immediate access to these virtual events. Both conferences are paired together and they’ll also be archived for attendees until next August. That’s a huge value.
– How to Attend: Once you register, you’ll receive a Registration Confirmation email from mvp@markeys.com. Use that email to complete your signup for the conference platform, then follow the agenda tab to enter sessions. All sessions are shown in Eastern Time – so you will need to adjust accordingly if you’re in a different time zone. Here’s today’s agenda. If you have any questions about accessing the conference, please contact Victoria Newton at VNewton@CCRcorp.com.
– How to Watch Archives: Members of TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com who register for the Conferences will be able to access the conference archives until July 31, 2021 by using their existing login credentials. Or if you’ve registered for the Conferences but aren’t a member, we will send login information to access the conference footage on TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com.
– How to Earn CLE Online: Please read these “CLE FAQs” carefully to confirm that your jurisdiction allows CLE credit for online programs. You will need to respond to periodic prompts every 15-20 minutes during the conference to attest that you are present. After the conference, you will receive an email with a link. Please complete the link with your state license information. Our CLE provider will process CLE credits to your state bar and also send a CLE certificate to your attention within 30 days of the conference.
219.05 In reporting compensation for periods affected by COVID-19, questions may arise whether benefits provided to executive officers because of the COVID-19 pandemic constitute perquisites or personal benefits for purposes of the disclosure required by Item 402(c)(2)(ix)(A) and determining which executive officers are “named executive officers” under Item 402(a)(3)(iii) and (iv). The two-step analysis articulated by the Commission in Release 33-8732A continues to apply when determining whether an item provided because of the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a perquisite or personal benefit.
– An item is not a perquisite or personal benefit if it is integrally and directly related to the performance of the executive’s duties.
– Otherwise, an item that confers a direct or indirect benefit and that has a personal aspect, without regard to whether it may be provided for some business reason or for the convenience of the company, is a perquisite or personal benefit unless it is generally available on a non-discriminatory basis to all employees.
Whether an item is “integrally and directly related to the performance of the executive’s duties” depends on the particular facts. In some cases, an item considered a perquisite or personal benefit when provided in the past may not be considered as such when provided as a result of COVID-19. For example, enhanced technology needed to make the NEO’s home his or her primary workplace upon imposition of local stay-at-home orders would generally not be a perquisite or personal benefit because of the integral and direct relationship to the performance of the executive’s duties. On the other hand, items such as new health-related or personal transportation benefits provided to address new risks arising because of COVID-19, if they are not integrally and directly related to the performance of the executive’s duties, may be perquisites or personal benefits even if the company would not have provided the benefit but for the COVID-19 pandemic, unless they are generally available to all employees.
Today: “Proxy Disclosure Conference – Part 2”
Today is the second day of our “Proxy Disclosure Conference” – tomorrow is our “17th Annual Executive Compensation Conference.” You can still register online to get immediate access to these virtual events! Both conferences are paired together and they’ll also be archived for attendees until next August. That’s a huge value.
– How to Attend: Once you register, you’ll receive a Registration Confirmation email from mvp@markeys.com. Use that email to complete your signup for the conference platform, then follow the agenda tab to enter sessions. All sessions are shown in Eastern Time – so you will need to adjust accordingly if you’re in a different time zone. Here’s today’s agenda. If you have any questions about accessing the conference, please contact Victoria Newton at VNewton@CCRcorp.com.
– How to Watch Archives: Members of TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com who register for the Conferences will be able to access the conference archives until July 31, 2021 by using their existing login credentials. Or if you’ve registered for the Conferences but aren’t a member, we will send login information to access the conference footage on TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com.
– How to Earn CLE Online: Please read these “CLE FAQs” carefully to confirm that your jurisdiction allows CLE credit for online programs. You will need to respond to periodic prompts every 15-20 minutes during the conference to attest that you are present. After the conference, you will receive an email with a link. Please complete the link with your state license information. Our CLE provider will process CLE credits to your state bar and also send a CLE certificate to your attention within 30 days of the conference.
Today and tomorrow is our “Proxy Disclosure Conference” – Wednesday is our “17th Annual Executive Compensation Conference.” Here are the agendas: 15 substantive panels over 3 days – plus 6 breakout roundtables today that you can choose from. Check out my promo video to see what’s in store! You can still register online to get immediate access to these virtual events! Both conferences are paired together and they’ll also be archived for attendees until next August. That’s a huge value.
– How to Attend: Once you register, you’ll receive a Registration Confirmation email from mvp@markeys.com. Use that email to complete your signup for the conference platform, then follow the agenda tab to enter sessions. All sessions are shown in Eastern Time – so you will need to adjust accordingly if you’re in a different time zone. Here’s today’s agenda. If you have any questions about accessing the conference, please contact Victoria Newton at VNewton@CCRcorp.com.
– How to Participate in a Roundtable: New this year, we have added interactive roundtables to discuss pressing topics! We hope you’ll join us for one of these half-hour breakout sessions. Space is limited for those, but you can save yourself a seat ahead of time by navigating to the agenda tab in the mvp platform and clicking on the seat icon next to the roundtable you want to attend.
– How to Watch Archives: Members of TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com who register for the Conferences will be able to access the conference archives until July 31, 2021 by using their existing login credentials. Or if you’ve registered for the Conferences but aren’t a member, we will send login information to access the conference footage on TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com.
– How to Earn CLE Online: Please read these “CLE FAQs” carefully to confirm that your jurisdiction allows CLE credit for online programs. You will need to respond to periodic prompts every 15-20 minutes during the conference to attest that you are present. After the conference, you will receive an email with a link. Please complete the link with your state license information. Our CLE provider will process CLE credits to your state bar and also send a CLE certificate to your attention within 30 days of the conference.
Last spring, I blogged about initial reports of Covid-19 related executive and director pay changes. For another look at pay actions taken in response to Covid-19, an Equilar and Stanford study provides a more recent review of CEO and director pay actions taken by Russell 3000 companies. The study examined Form 8-K and proxy statement filings from companies for the period January 1 – June 30, 2020. As companies continue to struggle with challenges presented by the pandemic, the study found 17% of companies made adjustments to CEO salary, bonus or long-term incentive programs or director fees.
The study’s narrative includes representative examples of specific pay actions some companies took – so for those looking for a sample disclosure of certain pay actions, this could be one place to look. Some of the study’s other findings include:
– Industries most likely to make pay changes were retail, manufacturing and transportation – which the study says includes airline companies
– Vast majority of pay changes were to CEO salary or director fees
– For companies that made changes to annual bonus programs, most reduced current or previous-year bonus payments
– Companies that took pay action had a median stock price decline of slightly over 30% compared to companies that didn’t take pay actions, which only saw a median stock price decline of 18%
– Of the companies reducing CEO or director pay, 82% also implemented workforce reductions or reduced average employee pay
The authors noted surprise in that the pay actions appeared to have little relation to ESG ratings – finding that the median ESG rating of companies taking CEO/director pay actions was not significantly different from the median rating of companies that left pay unchanged
With heightened scrutiny on executive pay and pay equity, a study by researchers at the University of Michigan, Simon Fraser University and The World Bank Research Group examines CEO pay ratio data and indicates that as a company’s CEO pay ratio increases so does the cost of capital. The study was released in 2019 and advocates for continued disclosure of CEO pay ratio data – but, a more recent University of Michigan news release touts the pay ratio – cost of capital connection. Here’s an excerpt from the news release:
The researchers wanted to know if more powerful CEOs actually harm their companies. They used publicly reported pay ratios to measure CEO power, and they chose cost of capital as an indicator of potential harm to companies. Quoting one of the authors, a professor of finance at Michigan, it says ‘If the firm is doing things that are inefficient, that are not in the best interest of the shareholders, that would be reflected in the cost of capital. We found that holding all else constant, as CEO power increases, it’s costing the shareholders more money.’
As a “sneak peek” for our members who are attending our “Proxy Disclosure & Executive Pay Conferences” that are starting next Monday, September 21st, we have posted the “Course Materials” – 167 pages of practical nuggets. For conference attendees who are not members, the materials will be posted later this week on our conference platform – so those folks can use the mvp@markeys.com registration email to access the platform and navigate to the “View Course Materials” link on the homepage.
With so many pandemic and rule-related developments this year, the Course Materials are better than ever before! We don’t serve typical conference fare (i.e. regurgitated memos and rule releases); our conference materials consist of originally crafted practical bullets & examples. Our expert speakers go the extra mile!
Here’s some other info:
– How to Attend: There’s still time to register for our pair of upcoming conferences, and once you do, you’ll receive a Registration Confirmation email from mvp@markeys.com. Use that email to complete your signup for the conference platform, then follow the agenda tab to enter sessions and add them to your calendar. All sessions are shown in Eastern Time – so you will need to adjust accordingly if you’re in a different time zone. Here are the agendas for all three days! If you have any questions about accessing the conference, please contact Victoria Newton at VNewton@CCRcorp.com.
– Register for a Roundtable: New this year, we have added interactive roundtables to discuss pressing topics! We hope you’ll join us for one of these half-hour breakout sessions – you can sign up here.
– How to Watch Archives: Members of TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com who register for the Conferences will be able to access the conference archives until July 31, 2021 by using their existing login credentials. Or if you’ve registered for the Conferences but aren’t a member, we will send login information to access the conference footage on TheCorporateCounsel.net or CompensationStandards.com.
– How to Earn CLE Online: Please read these “CLE FAQs” carefully to confirm that your jurisdiction allows CLE credit for online programs. You will need to respond to periodic prompts every 15-20 minutes during the conference to attest that you are present. After the conference, you will receive an email with a link. Please complete the link with your state license information. Our CLE provider will process CLE credits to your state bar and also send a CLE certificate to your attention within 30 days of the conference.
We’ve blogged before about potential use of discretion by compensation committees this year when determining incentive plan payouts and a recent Pay Governance memo says 77% of companies have considered using discretion at the end of the 2020 performance year. To help companies prepare for anticipated heightened investor scrutiny of incentive pay decisions, the memo urges compensation committees to conduct a rigorous assessment of performance prior to applying discretion, which can help make it easier to communicate any use of discretion to shareholders.
In terms of how to conduct this rigorous assessment of performance, the memo walks through a common example and summarizes several sample assessment criteria in what it calls a “resilience scorecard.” A scorecard may not be for everyone but it’s one way to put some structure around upcoming compensation decisions and as noted in the memo, it can go a long way in providing a strong rationale behind discretionary awards.
The scorecard is intended for use by compensation committees when finalizing incentive awards for 2020 and it breaks the assessment criteria into different categories relating to financial/operations, employees, customers/community and governance/shareholder matters. By way of example, the scorecard applies a discretionary score weighting to each category and can help committees explain decisions to shareholders in the CD&A – it provides more of a quantitative approach and shows considerations that were factored into final incentive awards. It’s worth checking out – especially in a year when investors and proxy advisors have their antennas up.
Compensation Advisory Partners recently completed its annual analysis of non-employee director compensation among the 100 largest companies. This is the 10th year CAP has conducted this analysis. Here are some highlights:
• Median total comp is now $310K, up from $305K last year. This is the lowest year-over-year increase during the 10 years that CAP has been conducting this study
o 10-year look: Median compensation has increased 32%, or 2.8% per year on an annualized basis, over the past 10 years (it was $235K in 2009)
• Median additional compensation for Lead Director is now $45K, up significantly from $35K last year
o 10-year look: Lead Director pay increased 80%, or 6% per year on an annualized basis, over the past 10 years (it was $25K in 2009)
• 11 percent of companies announced pandemic-related temporary compensation reductions for directors, with most decreases only impacting cash compensation.
According to this analysis just released by Willis Towers Watson, median CEO pay in the S&P 1500 was up “only” 5.5% for 2019 performance – the smallest rate of increase since 2016 – due to lower annual bonuses. A 13.1% increase in the S&P 500 positively influenced the average – things were more bleak at small- & mid-cap companies. And this was all based on performance before the pandemic! This announcement summarizes the findings. Here are some high points:
– Total earned pay for S&P 1500 CEOs increased 5.5% at the median in 2019, a sharp drop from a 13.7% jump in the previous year
– While S&P 500 CEOs saw a 13.1% increase at the median, total pay for S&P 600 and S&P 400 CEOs grew just 4.8% and 0.2%, respectively
– There was a -3.2% decrease in annual bonus payouts compared with a 5.8% increase in the previous cycle – the average annual bonus payout dropped from 114% of target in 2018 to just 102% for 2019, the lowest mark since the Great Recession
– Earned long-term incentives, the largest component of executive pay at major companies, increased 8.4% in 2019, down sharply from an increase of 13.1% in 2018
– CEO salaries, which have held steady the past few years, increased a modest 2.5% at the median in 2019 – in 2020, nearly one-fifth of companies have reduced CEO salaries in response to the pandemic
You can still register for our popular conferences – the “Proxy Disclosure Conference” & “17th Annual Executive Compensation Conference” – to be held virtually Monday – Wednesday, September 21st – 23rd. We’ll be covering the latest issues that you need to know – including COVID-related pay adjustments and disclosures, human capital management, navigating proxy advisors, and shareholder proposal rules & trends. Here are the agendas – 15 panels over 3 days.
New this year, we have also added interactive roundtables to discuss pressing topics! We hope you’ll join us for one of these half-hour breakout sessions – you can sign up here. To make the most of your experience, check out this blog for tips for “virtual networking” for lawyers. Here’s an excerpt:
– Be On-Camera: Speaking of cameras, please do not participate in a zoom networking event without being able to have a camera available. That black square with your name will not allow others to see who you are. It would be the equivalent to going to an in-person event and wearing a paper bag over your head. People would like to see who you are. Also, make sure that you are well lit when you are on camera. Too many people are on camera with the light behind them and you cannot see their faces clearly. A light should be in front of you.
– Show up on time (or even early): This is something I advocate for IRL networking, but concerning virtual networking, it is even more important. It is distracting to have someone enter a conversation in the middle of a virtual event, as opposed to a live networking event, and should be avoided at all costs. And, if you have to leave early, you can just make mention that you have an appointment that you have to attend to and thank everyone who was there. You can send a note to the host using the chat feature. Or, you can just leave quietly.
As the blog notes, there are no marketing and business development tactics that cannot be done virtually. So take advantage of this opportunity to meet with your fellow practitioners in a low pressure way, have a good conversation, and make a connection or two.