One thing is for certain: Pay is unique at every company. There are as many iterations of pay as there are companies in America. This uniqueness makes our job as shareholders very challenging. For the most part, we must rely on the members of compensation committees to develop the compensation philosophy and structure in order to incentivize management and align their interests with those of shareholders. We believe that poorly structured pay packages harm shareholder value by unfairly enriching executives at the expense of owners – the shareholders. On the other hand, a well aligned compensation package motivates executives to perform at their best. This benefits all shareholders.

There have been many changes this proxy season and although the evaluation of compensation is still a challenge, we have learned a few things along the way. Given the unique nature of compensation, CalSTRS tried to evaluate pay holistically at every company. We not only looked at the alignment between pay practices and the performance of the companies, but also corporate peer groups, problematic pay practices, and disclosures.

…continue reading: Lessons Learned: The Inaugural Year of Say-on-Pay

Over the past two weeks, Lucian Bebchuk and René Stulz engaged in an online debate on the question: Has Executive Compensation Contributed to the Financial Crisis? Bebchuk supported a “yes” answer, and Stulz argued for a “no” answer. The debate, which was hosted by the World Bank’s All about Finance blog, was followed by a poll in which readers cast their votes. The votes are now in, and 79.9% of the votes were cast in support of the position supported by Bebchuk.

The opening statements by Bebchuk and Stulz are available here and here. The second-round responses by Bebchuk and Stulz are available here and here. The results of the readers’ poll are available here.

As we begin to analyze the first proxy season under “say on pay” in the US, it may be useful to review the evidence from the UK experience with say on pay. In the study, Say on Pay Votes and CEO Compensation: Evidence from the UK, co-authored with David Maber of University of Southern California and forthcoming in the Review of Finance, we examine the impact of “say on pay” in the UK, the first country to adopt a mandatory, non-binding annual shareholder vote on executive pay.

We perform three sets of analyses. First, we examine the market reaction to the (largely unanticipated) announcement of say on pay regulation and find positive abnormal returns for firms with weak penalties for poor performance, e.g. firms with excess CEO pay combined with poor performance and firms with generous severance contracts, which can weaken penalties in the event of poor future performance.

…continue reading: Say on Pay Votes and CEO Compensation

Professor Lucian Bebchuk testified yesterday before the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection of the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. He participated in a hearing on “Pay for Performance: Incentive Compensation at Large Financial Institutions.” In addition to Bebchuk, the other witnesses testifying in the hearing were Kurt Hyde, Deputy Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program; Professor Robert J. Jackson, Jr., Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; and Michael S. Melbinger, an executive compensation expert appearing on behalf of the Financial Services Roundtable.

In his testimony, Bebchuk explained how compensation practices at financial firms should be reformed to eliminate excessive risk-taking incentives. He described two distinct shortcomings of pay arrangements: first, excessive focus on short-term results; and, second, excessive focus on results for shareholders. He then discussed how pay arrangements should be designed to address each of these problems. In particular, Bebchuk explained how pay structures  should be designed to induce executives to focus on long-term rather than short-term results, as well as to induce such executives to take into account the consequences of their decisions for all those contributing to the bank’s capital (rather than only for shareholders). Bebchuk suggested that the rules proposed by regulators last spring be strengthened to ensure that financial firms provide executives with such incentives. Because of the importance of providing such incentives for financial stability, he concluded, ensuring that financial firms  provide such incentives should be regarded as a regulatory priority.

Bebchuk’s written testimony is available here.

In his opening statement, René Stulz relies on the results of the Fahlenbrach-Stulz study (FS study) to reject the view that executive compensation has contributed to the financial crisis. Stulz argues that the evidence in his study is “inconsistent with the view that banks performed poorly because CEOs had poor incentives.” However, as explained below, the FS study does not provide a good basis for rejecting the poor incentives view.

The FS study attempts to test the “poor incentives” hypothesis by examining whether banks whose CEOs had larger equity holdings performed better during the crisis. Failing to find such an association – and indeed finding that such banks performed worse – the FS study rejects the poor incentives hypothesis. But the poor incentives view does not attribute poor risk-taking incentives to relatively low equity holdings, and the analysis in the FS study does not supply an adequate test of this view.

As I explained in my opening statement, the poor incentives view does not regard large equity holdings as the way to ensure good risk-taking incentives and does not view poor incentives as rooted in insufficient equity holdings. Rather, as I explained, poor incentives have resulted from (i) design of equity compensation (as well as bonus compensation) that rewarded executives even for short-term results that were subsequently reversed, and (ii) linking executive payoffs only to payoffs for shareholders and not also to payoffs for other contributors of capital to financial firms (such as bondholders).

…continue reading: Executive Pay and the Financial Crisis: A Response to René Stulz

In a decision reaffirming directors’ authority to determine executive compensation, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon has ruled that a suit against bank directors arising out of a negative “say on pay” vote should be dismissed. The court determined that plaintiffs failed to raise a reasonable doubt that the challenged compensation was a reasonable exercise of the board’s business judgment. This is the first federal court decision to dismiss such an action, a number of which have been filed in state and federal courts across the country in the wake of the Dodd-Frank Act. Plumbers Local No. 137 Pension Fund v. Davis, Civ. No. 03:11-633-AC (Jan. 11, 2012).

At issue in Davis was a decision by the compensation committee of Umpqua Holdings Corporation to pay increased compensation to certain executive officers for 2010 — a year in which the bank’s performance had improved and met predetermined compensation targets, but total shareholder return was allegedly negative. In a subsequent advisory “say on pay” vote, a majority of the shares voted disapproved of the 2010 compensation. Plaintiffs claimed that it was unreasonable for the Umpqua board of directors to increase compensation and that the shareholder vote rejecting the compensation package was prima facie evidence that the board’s action was not in the corporation’s or shareholders’ best interest.

…continue reading: Negative Say on Pay Vote Litigation

Governance developments in 2011 brought some good news. Shareholder governance proposals were at their lowest level since 2002. Support declined for controversial proposals, such as shareholders’ right to call special meetings or act by written consent, and ISS conceded that its recommendations about written consent proposals should reflect the company’s governance as a whole. Even say-on-pay voting had some worthwhile effects. It gave shareholders the means to express more targeted dissatisfaction, driving a decline in opposition to director incumbents, and it prompted more and better dialogue between many companies and their major shareholders and better disclosure about the business rationale for pay decisions.

But regulators and shareholders remain energized. The SEC brought a record number of enforcement proceedings in 2011, a trend likely to continue, and it and the PCAOB have several important regulatory initiatives underway. For their part, shareholders remain acutely focused on stock performance as the yardstick to evaluate a company’s execution, despite market swings experienced in 2011 that reflected more than anything else fragile economic and political conditions worldwide. The Eurozone crisis and election year politics will keep business prospects extremely challenging and uncertain. In this context, it is critical for boards to frame their deliberative processes in a way that assures the protection of the business judgment rule, while positioning themselves and management to meet expectations of regulators and investors alike. We highlight below some of the issues we believe boards should keep in mind in 2012.

…continue reading: Board Focus 2012: Issues and Developments

Yes, there is a good basis for concern that executive pay arrangements have contributed to excessive risk-taking during the run-up to the financial crisis. To be sure, other factors were clearly at work: the environment within which firms operated grew riskier due to asset bubbles generated by macro policies and global factors, and regulatory constraints on risk-taking and capital requirements were too lax. As financial economists generally recognize, however, for any given environment and outside constraints, the performance and risk choices of firms depend substantially on the incentives of firms’ executives. Unfortunately, rather than provide incentives to avoid excessive risk-taking, the design of pay arrangements in financial firms encouraged such risk-taking.

Of course, despite incentives to take excessive risks, some executives might have avoided doing so due to professional integrity, reputational concerns, or fiduciary duty norms. And some executives taking excessive risks might have done so due to their under-estimation of the risks taken. But economics and finance teach us that incentives often matter. Thus, to the extent that pay arrangements provided significant incentives to take excessive risks, the possibility that such incentives in fact contributed materially to the excessive risks taken in the run-up to the crisis should be seriously considered.

In fact, pay arrangements did provide substantial incentives for excessive risk-taking. Under the standard design of pay arrangements, executives were fully exposed to the upside of risks taken but enjoyed substantial insulation from part of the downside of such risks. As a result, executives had incentives to increase risk-taking beyond optimal levels.

…continue reading: Executive Pay and the Financial Crisis

Hewlett-Packard’s announcement that it will no longer accelerate the vesting of equity grants for departing executives is the latest victory in a new push by active investors to limit such generous exit packages (a Wall Street Journal story about the announcement is available here).

The drive began in 2010 when Amalgamated Bank’s LongView Funds filed shareholder proposals at several companies urging them to back away from the long-standing practice of accelerating awards of restricted stock or stock options when an executive departs after a change in control or even without such a change. (Pro rata vesting would be allowed under these proposals.)

The LongView Funds argued that these equity awards were intended to be performance-based, and multi-million dollar awards that disregard vesting requirements have nothing to do with performance. The value of accelerated awards can often dwarf the amount paid in terms of the “base pay plus bonus” components of a severance agreement. Eight-figure payouts are not uncommon.

…continue reading: Accelerated Equity Awards for Departing Executives Lose Favor

The past year has been one of change and challenge for public companies and their boards, as companies have moved to implement “say-on-pay” and other provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”). With the 2012 proxy season on the horizon, public companies and their directors will continue to feel the impact of Dodd-Frank as the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) proceeds with its ongoing efforts to implement the law. At the same time, public companies and their boards are operating in an environment where the balance of power between boards and shareholders continues to shift. The traditional, board-centric model of corporate governance continues to gravitate toward a paradigm that includes an increased role for shareholders. Activist shareholders are seeking greater participation in companies’ governance and operations, and they are exerting increased pressure on companies to adopt so-called corporate governance “best practices.”

…continue reading: Considerations for Public Company Directors in the 2012 Proxy Season