The Effect of Say on Pay on CEO Compensation and Spill-over Effect on Corporate Cash Holdings : Evidence from Australia

We examine the impact of Australia's Remuneration Amendment Act 2011 on CEO compensation and its spill-over effect on cash holdings to better understand how the new legislation affects the principal–agent relationship. Using a sample of ASX top 300 firms from 2004 to 2015, we find that the Act leads to more use of equity-based compensation. We also document that, after the introduction of the Act, CEO equity-based and total compensations are negatively related with cash holdings, i.e., more equity and total compensations lead to lower cash holdings (a spill-over effect), indicating alignment of the principal–agent interests. We praise the Act for the achievements. Our results are robust to different estimation techniques. Our findings provide important insights for the discussion on compensation regulations