The Wall Street Journal had an article about the way corporations are explaining their executive pay in obtuse and obscure numbers in many annual reports. Trying to make the pay look smaller.
This is understandable but is a direct offense to me. It is understandable because executives are trying to steal corporate wealth by hiding their actual pay from the shareholders who are increasingly called upon to approve their compensation.
It is a personal offense to me because I developed the current SEC required statement of executive compensation.
I developed these tables for PG&E to use at a time when PG&E was getting out of bankruptcy and they were exceptionally vulnerable to my activism. PG&E adopted my table of executive compensation reporting.
One and a half years later, with a little encouragement from me, the SEC adopted my table. Prior to that time, there were three main ways of reporting executive compensation. One was by Fortune magazine, another by labor unions and a third by the Wall Street Journal. Now there is one.
It is time to make the SEC require its own definition of executive compensation be used in all annual reports.
It is even more important that there be clear-cut executive compensation options. Maybe three maybe five packages from which any Corporation is required to select the nature of its package. And the Corporation must stick with that package for at least five years. I have written about this package model earlier.
This is understandable but is a direct offense to me. It is understandable because executives are trying to steal corporate wealth by hiding their actual pay from the shareholders who are increasingly called upon to approve their compensation.
I developed these tables for PG&E to use at a time when PG&E was getting out of bankruptcy and they were exceptionally vulnerable to my activism. PG&E adopted my table of executive compensation reporting.
One and a half years later, with a little encouragement from me, the SEC adopted my table. Prior to that time, there were three main ways of reporting executive compensation. One was by Fortune magazine, another by labor unions and a third by the Wall Street Journal. Now there is one.
It is time to make the SEC require its own definition of executive compensation be used in all annual reports.
It is even more important that there be clear-cut executive compensation options. Maybe three maybe five packages from which any Corporation is required to select the nature of its package. And the Corporation must stick with that package for at least five years. I have written about this package model earlier.