With new rules on conducting an annual compensation risk assessment for publicly-traded companies approved by the SEC on December 16, 2009, each organization needs to perform an evaluation of its compensation program, paying special attention to the risk it is assuming with the policies and...

Many public companies are redesigning or have re-designed their incentive programs to ensure a link between performance achievement for the company and executive and performance achievement for shareholders. A disconnect stemming from faulty incentive design could expose an executive and the...

Despite being a keystone duty of a corporate board, CEO hiring and succession if often a governance afterthought. Pressures from the SEC and investors are driving boards to shape a coherent, responsible succession plan. Are you ready?

Investors and the business media may be vexed about rich executive pay plans, but "golden parachute" severance packages stir particular outrage. Too often, it seems, this departure pay rewards failure, is based on inflated numbers, and loses "say on parachute" investor votes. How can your board...

Legislative and regulatory activity is slowing down, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act rulemaking by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission continues to be much slower than expected. For example, companies have resisted CEO pay to average worked ratio...

There has been much media attention on severance payments, often reported as golden parachute payments, to CEOs and other high-level executives who have resigned, retired or been terminated at companies that have underperformed. This public concern over excessive severance payments to executives...

Cash-based long-term incentive (“LTI”) plans have long been an alternative to equity based LTI plans. Their use has trailed off in recent years, but still represents a signfi cant part of many LTI plans. Who uses these types of plans, and why and how to they differ from equity-based LTI plans?

Privately-held companies (“Private Companies,” which include family owned and in some part not for profit) sometimes approach compensation very differently from publicly traded companies (“Public Companies”). While the compensation philosophies may be different, the total compensation...

Shareholders of publicly traded companies are increasingly aware of executive compensation issues and are focused on the relationship between pay and performance. Indeed, with say on pay implemented in 2011 (with most of the say-on-pay votes being annual), pay for performance has become a core...