Equal Pay Day: How does your compensation compare?

See Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane are the same age, earned the same college degree, have two years of the same work experience, are employed by the same company and hold the same job title. The only difference? Dick makes $50,000 per year and Jane only makes $40,000.

April 4 is Equal Pay Day, which symbolizes how far into this year that Jane must work to earn the same amount that Dick earned in the previous year. Her education, skills, experience and job responsibilities are the same as Dick’s, but Jane makes 80 cents for every dollar that Dick is paid. Why? Because Jane is female.

Did reading this story about two fictional characters make you angry? It should, because for many women, this isn’t a fictional story. READ MORE

All of Your Questions About Employee Stock Options, Answered

Maybe you’ve paid your dues for years and are finally being tapped for upper management. Or perhaps you’re being recruited by a tech startup who wants you to get in early on a big venture.

In either case, a company may try to woo you with a compensation package that includes stock options, which are used to tie your total pay to the company’s performance so that if the company does well, you do well. While stock options won’t pad your paycheck right away, they can help grow your wealth in the long run.

But if you’ve never had to deal with stock options before, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the jargon. So we’ve collected eight of the most common terms you might come across and decoded them, so you’ll know what, exactly, you’re being offered. READ MORE

Iowa House OKs bill to abolish compensation boards

The Iowa House voted to abolish compensation boards and place responsibility for setting county elected officials’ salaries with boards of supervisors.

“If supervisors want to give themselves a raise, then own it,” bill manager Rep. Megan Jones, R-Spencer, said about a bill she said was about “smaller, smarter government … truth in government … transparency in government.”

The House also approved changes in domestic abuse sentencing laws and modified Department of Transportation enforcement officers’ authority. READ MORE

Performance Management: Lessons from Professional Baseball

Spring means a few things for me but especially spring training for professional baseball and geeking out over how to get the most out of the talent on my favorite team (both on the baseball diamond, and in my office). Baseball performance metrics have changed over my lifetime. I watch expectantly at the promise of equivalent change in non-baseball employers as I read articles like “The Performance Management Revolution” in the Harvard Business Review.

Let me expedite that change by sharing how businesses might copy the Pittsburgh Pirates. READ MORE

Former Valeant CEO sues company over unmade compensation

Former Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc Chief Executive Michael Pearson has filed a lawsuit against the Canadian drugmaker, alleging it refused to pay him more than 3 million shares he is owed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Based on Valeant's stock price of $10.81 at the close of trading Monday on the NYSE, the shares have a market value of about $32.43 million. READ MORE

Wells Fargo to pay $110 million to settle fake account suit

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $110 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over up to 2 million accounts its employees opened for customers without getting their permission, the bank announced Tuesday.

It’s the first private settlement that Wells has reached since the company paid $185 million to federal and California authorities late last year. Authorities said bank employees, driven by high-pressure sales tactics, opened the bank and credit card accounts without customer authorization. READ MORE

WILL ACA REPEAL EFFORTS IMPACT EXECUTIVE PAY PRACTICES?

The House Republican health-care proposal, the American Health Care Act (H.R. 1628), would modify or repeal in part the Affordable Care Act tax provisions impacting executive pay for health insurers, among other changes.  See related story, How Will The Proposed AHCA Be Different From the ACA For Employers?

Health insurers and executive compensation experts are keeping a close eye on American Health Care Act developments, including the House floor vote scheduled for March 23.  The proposed repeal of the ACA-mandated tax provisions would be effective for tax years beginning after Dec. 31, 2017. READ MORE

Executive Compensation Commands Board Committee Expertise

There's no question the responsibilities of the board's compensation committee have escalated, particularly since the 2008 financial crisis and with passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) in 2010. The legislation required regulators to demonstrate a link between executive pay and the performance of the corporation. Since joining the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) 16 years ago, CEO Peter R. Gleason spearheaded a wide range of research and education initiatives that track the changing dynamics of the boardroom and the increased expectations on the directors' role. During our conversation, Gleason, who was promoted to NACD president in 2014 and became CEO of the now 40-year-old organization in January, reflected on the evolution of the compensation committee and, in particular, on the ongoing need for director education.  READ MORE

4 Big Bank CEOs Ranked By 2016 Compensation

It's that time of year when publicly traded companies file their proxy reports, which disclose how much they paid their top executives the previous year. Now that all four of the nation's megabanks have done so, we can compare the compensation of the heads of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), and Citigroup (NYSE:C). READ MORE

Wells Fargo CEO got nearly $13 million in compensation in 2016

Wells Fargo & Co. awarded Chief Executive Timothy Sloan $12.83 million in compensation for 2016 after he took over the embattled bank this fall following its sales practices scandal.

Sloan received $2.33 million in base pay, with a bonus that included shares valued at $10.5 million. He, along with seven other executives, didn’t receive a cash bonus this year compared with $1 million Sloan received for 2015 and the $4 million that his predecessor John Stumpf received in cash bonus that year.

The lack of cash bonus along with up to 50% reduction in certain stock awards for 2016 was meant to reflect the $185 million fine the bank paid last fall for opening as many as 2.1 million accounts using fictitious or unauthorized customer information. READ MORE

Paying Most Sales Employees Purely on Draw and Commission No Longer Lawful In California

Last month a California appellate court held that an employer violates California law by paying inside sales employees on a draw against commission. In Vaquero v. Stoneledge Furniture LLC, the court held that such a pay arrangement does not compensate employees for their mandatory paid rest breaks and other non-selling working time. READ MORE

Section 162(m): Actions to Take by March 31, 2017

This Alert serves to remind publicly held companies of things that need to be done early this year to help minimize or avoid the application of the deduction limitations imposed by Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. The Alert also provides an overview of the basic principles contained in Section 162(m). READ MORE

IS YOUR COMPANY SAFE? THE LINK BETWEEN STOCK OPTIONS AND ACCOUNTING FRAUD

The sun always rises. Time is unidirectional. Financial wealth can beget greed. All are fundamental truths of the universe. With regard to the last, is it possible to theorize on the link between performance-based corporate executive compensation and accounting fraud? How do we determine what separates Chief Executive Officers (CEO) such as Jeffery Skilling and Kenneth Lay from the failed conglomerate Enron from perceived highly successful CEO’s such as Jack Welch at General Electric? All of the former corporate executives were handsomely compensated in company stock options, so is it really possible to derive a correlation between corporate pay metrics and fraud? We dive deeper for answers. READ MORE

We Know Female CEOs Get Paid More, But We Don’t Know Why

Last spring Equilar, an executive compensation firm, released a headline-grabbing study on gender and CEO pay. In a survey of 341 S&P 500 companies, it found that the 17 female chief executives in the group made nearly $8 million more on average than their 324 male counterparts. Some in the media responded with shock and excitement (Fortune called it, for example, “a reverse gender gap”), while others cautioned about the report’s small sample size. But these findings are supported by two rigorous academic studies: One found that women who hold, or are likely to hold, senior management positions earn up to 10% more than their male peers. Another found not only that female CEOs are paid more than male CEOs but also that nonwhite CEOs (African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American ethnicities) are paid more than white CEOs. READ MORE

Executive Compensation Developments

The general counsel should anticipate questions from the board and its executive compensation committee from recent media coverage of executive compensation (especially in the nonprofit sector). This increased focus has concentrated on issues relating to reasonableness of compensation, and the use of compensation to reward particular organization and individual success—and to hold executives accountable for shortfalls in leadership or performance. READ MORE

Stock award web process works: non-compete enforced

As a general matter, employers “win” when they seek to enforce stock plan terms that have been fairly disclosed -- and accepted -- by award recipients. ADP recently had such a victory, through a 3rd Circuit decision granting a preliminary injunction against two former employees who had joined a competitor in violation of restrictive covenants set forth in their stock awards. They argued that ADP’s web-based system for issuing stock awards did not adequately alert them to the consequences of the stock awards they accepted.

The employees lost because ADP’s check-the-box award system involved the following key steps that led the court to bind them to the stock award agreements and the associated noncompetes:

READ MORE

How pay transparency and equity help employers retain workers

More than ever, companies are updating their compensation strategy and practice to build more trusting relationships with their workforce, emphasizing pay transparency and equity, according to the 2017 Compensation Best Practices Report from cloud compensation services company PayScale.

The 2017 Compensation Best Practices Report (CBPR) is based on data from 7,700 executives, line of business managers, human resource leaders and compensation practitioners, and reflects current attitudes about compensation, business growth, hiring and retention. The latest annual report shows a shift is underway at many companies as key talent markets are becoming increasingly competitive. READ MORE

Health Insurers Would Get Fatter Tax Break on CEO Pay Under GOP Plan

Health insurance companies stand to gain a bigger tax break for CEO pay in the Obamacare revamp.

The bill unveiled Monday would scrap the limitation for insurers on how much executive compensation is tax deductible. The new proposal lifts the guaranteed deduction to $1 million from $500,000 established by the Affordable Care Act and also lets insurers deduct any pay linked to performance.

The threshold set by the Obama administration was designed to discourage companies from letting any increases in revenue go to executive bonuses rather than patient care. The measure would be removed at the end of 2017 if the proposal put forth by Republicans, called the American Health Care Act, becomes law. It would also bring insurers on par with other public U.S. companies. READ MORE

Charity Officials Are Increasingly Receiving Million-Dollar Paydays

Charities are becoming a lot more generous with pay at the top.

The tax-exempt organizations, which include many hospitals and colleges as well as traditional charities such as the United Way, provided seven-figure compensation to roughly 2,700 employees in 2014, an analysis of newly available data shows.

The total is higher by a third than in 2011, The Wall Street Journal found, after analyzing about 100,000 organizations that filed electronic returns with the Internal Revenue Service all four years. READ MORE

Executive Compensation for Financial Services in a Trump Administration

A month into the Trump presidency, there have been a number of important statements from the executive branch on the regulation of executive compensation impacting the financial services industry. On February 3, 2017, President Trump issued a statement on the core principles for regulating the U.S. financial system (“Core Principles”). The statement requires the Treasury and all heads of member agencies of the Financial Stability Oversight Council to report within 120 days (by June 3, 2017) all existing laws, treaties, guidance, regulations, etc., that promote the Core Principles, and all such laws, etc., that inhibit the Core Principles. The Core Principles provide some insight into future regulation or repeal efforts by the Trump administration impacting executive compensation. READ MORE