Remuneration consultants are an integral part of the process of determining executive pay in large listed companies. This paper discusses the role of the consultants in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, analyses their industry and the factors currently affecting it, and summarizes...

Using a sample of U.S. S&P 1500 firms from 2007-2009, we provide new evidence showing that CEOs of firms engaging BIG6 consultants receive lower equity payments and lower total compensations compared to that of firms engaging SMALL consultants. In addition, we also find that a switch in a firm's...

Critics allege that executive compensation consultants face potential conflicts of interest (lack of independence) that might lead to higher CEO pay. Conflicts of interest include the desires to "cross-sell" service and to secure "repeat business". Using a unique data set of compensation...

We propose a measure of the advising capacity of corporate boards that focuses on the distribution of committee assignments. We then study the characteristics and impact of directors dedicated to providing strategic counsel to top management. We find that advisory directors possess professional...

Using hand-collected compensation consultant data, we investigate whether compensation consultants exhibit distinct styles in the determination of CEO pay level and compensation structure. Our tests, which include the use of placebo samples that involve the scrambling of consultants as...

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of compensation consultants on CEO pay. We show that the use of a compensation consultant has an increasing effect on the level of total CEO compensation, which is consistent with the “ratcheting up” effect of consultants on CEO pay argued by...

We investigate the impact of a firm's compensation consultant choice on executive compensation by examining shifts in consultant choice following a 2009 US Securities Exchange Commission requirement that firms disclose fees paid to compensation consultants for both consulting and other services....

This paper (forthcoming in Research in International Business and Finance) examines the practice of employing multiple compensation consultants. Examining data of a sample of UK companies over the period 2003–2006 we find that CEOs receive higher equity-based pay when firms employ more than...

This study extends prior research on the role of compensation consultant in the design of executive remuneration and investigates firms' choices of performance targets in executive compensation. Using unique hand-collected data on 257 London Stock Exchange listed firms from FTSE 350 and Small...

While compensation consultants are known to play an important role in the design of executive compensation contracts, evidence on the effect of compensation consultants on CEO pay is mixed. Using a sample of 3,198 compensation consultant engagements and 576 executive compensation consulting fee...