Among the controversies in corporate governance, perhaps none is more heated or widely debated across society than that of CEO pay. The views that American citizens have on CEO pay is centrally important because public opinion influences political decisions that shape tax, economic, and...

Scrutiny of CEO pay increases during times of economic stress, when it is not clear how much pay CEOs should receive when corporate profitability suffers due to an unforeseen decline in the operating environment. On the one hand, the board might want to preserve incentives, recognizing that a...

CEO compensation is a highly controversial subject. While most company directors believe that CEO pay is not a problem, the majority of the American public believes that it is. The difficulties that boards face in justifying CEO pay levels in some ways stem from the challenge of quantifying how...

Say on pay is the practice of granting shareholders the right to vote on a company's executive compensation program at the annual shareholder meeting. Under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, publicly traded companies in the U.S. are required to adopt say on pay. Advocates of this approach believe that...

We examine CEO turnover and succession planning using a unique and highly comprehensive data set from the company exechange. Exechange applies a novel methodology that evaluates the circumstances surrounding a CEO departure to determine the degree to which the turnover event might be voluntary...

In Closer Look, we highlight significant “holes” in our knowledge of corporate governance. These are central issues where insufficient or inadequate study has left us unable to answer basic questions, and where key assumptions relied upon by experts have not been verified or validated. While...

Recent years have seen a reemergence of the practice of awarding “mega grants” to CEOs. Mega grants are large, one-time equity awards granted in lieu of or in addition to annual awards with the intended purpose of providing significant incentive to the CEO to achieve long-term targets. The...

In the late 1990s, UtiliCorp United, a utility that owned natural gas and power assets in the Midwest and internationally, moved aggressively into the business of wholesale energy trading. The move came after Congress passed legislation that opened wholesale energy markets to competition, with...

Eugene Isenberg, CEO of Nabors Industries, was listed in a 2006 Wall Street Journal article as one of the highest paid executives in the U.S. over the previous 14 years. He received this compensation as a result of a unique bonus arrangement and large stock option grants with several favorable...

Retail grocery sales represent a significant portion of the U.S. economy. The industry was highly competitive, with companies operating on low gross and net margins. As a result, grocery stores were generally under significant pressure to reduce their operating costs in order to maintain...