Executive Compensation

General readers have no idea why people should care about what executives are paid and why they are paid the way they are. That's the reason that The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, and other popular and practitioner publications have regular coverage on them. This book not only proposes a reason - executives need incentives in order to maximize firm value (economists call this agency theory) - it also describes the nature and design of executive compensation practices. Those incentives can take the form of benefits (salary, stock options), or prerquisites (reflecting the status of the executive within the organizational culture.

The definitive guide for anyone involved in designing and approving executive salaries—revised for new laws and attitudes about salaries and performance The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation, Third Edition, helps you evaluate your company’s culture, organization, and strategy to create the best compensation package for the organization’s interest. It contains new strategies based on recent changes regarding venture capitalism, boards of director’s core responsibilities, changes in director’s pay, shifts in stakeholder power, and laws like the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and healthcare reform. Bruce R. Ellig served at Pfizer Inc. for over 35 years, and spent his last 25 years as secretary of the Board of Directors' Executive Compensation Committee. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Society of Human Resource Management and WorldatWork. Ellig was elected to the National Academy of Human Resources in 1993 and served as a fellow of the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Wharton Aresty Institute.

Executive Compensation is an invaluable legal guide through the maze of rules, regulations and practices that govern corporate financial compensation for executive employees.

When it comes to creating an executive compensation program, it can feel like there’s little gray area between giving top performers too shiny a golden parachute, with exorbitant perks, and providing the company’s leaders with the incentive they need to continue doing their best. This book gives readers the techniques and understanding they need to design a rewards strategy that will motivate performers while benefiting the entire organization. Taking a careful look at the complicated state of executive rewards, this no-nonsense, practical guide provides readers with a complete methodology for motivating management to accomplish critical business goals. Eschewing a one-size-fits-all approach, the book uses case studies and examples to illustrate what factors should be considered—including environment, key stakeholders, people strategy, business strategy, and organizational capabilities—when designing a program that will benefit both their company and the people who fuel its success.

The numerous incentive approaches and combinations and their implications can be dizzying even to the compensation professional. Pay for Results provides a road map for developing and implementing executive incentives that drive business needs and strategy. It is filled with specific analytic tools, including tables, exhibits, forms, checklists. In addition, it uncovers myths in performance measurement strategy and design. Timely and thorough, this book expertly shows businesses how to drive their specific needs and strategy. Human resources and compensation officers will discover how to apply performance metrics that align with shareholder investment.

The company is under-performing, its share price is trailing, and the CEO gets...a multi-million-dollar raise. This story is familiar, for good reason: as this book clearly demonstrates, structural flaws in corporate governance have produced widespread distortions in executive pay. Pay without Performance presents a disconcerting portrait of managers' influence over their own pay--and of a governance system that must fundamentally change if firms are to be managed in the interest of shareholders. Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried demonstrate that corporate boards have persistently failed to negotiate at arm's length with the executives they are meant to oversee. They give a richly detailed account of how pay practices--from option plans to retirement benefits--have decoupled compensation from performance and have camouflaged both the amount and performance-insensitivity of pay. Executives' unwonted influence over their compensation has hurt shareholders by increasing pay levels and, even more importantly, by leading to practices that dilute and distort managers' incentives. This book identifies basic problems with our current reliance on boards as guardians of shareholder interests. And the solution, the authors argue, is not merely to make these boards more independent of executives as recent reforms attempt to do. Rather, boards should also be made more dependent on shareholders by eliminating the arrangements that entrench directors and insulate them from their shareholders. A powerful critique of executive compensation and corporate governance, Pay without Performance points the way to restoring corporate integrity and improving corporate performance.

ANSWERS TO EXCESSIVE EXECUTIVE PAY Charges of excessive executive compensation have filled the business press for a number of years, yet few understand why pay plans trigger such results.This desktop reference book is an easy-to-access, invaluable guide to structuring appropriate executive pay plans. Properly used, it will help avoid excessive executive pay resulting from poorly designed plans. Written by renowned compensation expert Bruce Ellig, this book is a must read for the designers, approvers, and recipients of executive compensation, as well as those who write about the subject. Consultants and in-house pay designers will find detailed examples (supplemented with over 400 figures and tables) to trigger their own creativity. Compensation committees and other approvers of executive pay plans will value the definitions and descriptions of various pay plans and the conditions under which they would be appropriate. Executives themselves will find the book useful. Not only in better understanding their own plans, but learning more about other plans, both those they may only have heard about, as well as many that have not yet caught their attention. And those who write about the subject will be able to put their comments in a better perspective.. The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation takes an in-depth look at each of the executive pay elements: salary, executive benefits and incentives (both short and long term). This review also includes the role of the board of directors (and its compensation committee) along with the influence of the major stakeholders (most notably the shareholder). And a complete chapter is devoted to various measurements of executive performance. This book also contains a compendium of selected key information on executive compensation, including laws, Internal Revenue Code sections, IRS revenue rulings, accounting interpretations, and SEC actions. No other book has such a complete resource section. In addition, it includes both a historical review of key developments and a look ahead, as well as a glossary with more than 2,000 definitions.

Executive Compensation Best Practices demystifies the topic of executive compensation, with a hands-on guide providing comprehensive compensation guidance for all members of the board. Essential reading for board members, CEOs, and senior human resources leaders from companies of every size, this book is the most authoritative reference on executive compensation.

The definitive guide to executive compensation—fully updated and revised to reflect today’s business environment Executive pay is one of the most fluid, flexible, and important aspects of today’s corporate landscape, and an integral part of every company’s strategic business plan. The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation has long been considered the go-to guide to executive pay. Written by renowned compensation expert Bruce Ellig, the book is filled with winning strategies and techniques for structuring appropriate executive pay plans. This updated fourth edition addresses important changes that have occurred from 2013 to 2019 in designing and administering compensation packages. In detail, Ellig discusses executive pay elements, including salary, employee benefits, executive benefits, and long- and short term incentives. He also examines the role of the board of directors and its compensation committee, along with the influence of the major stakeholders (most notably the shareholder). The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation, Fourth Edition covers: New rulings and laws, such as the 2018 Tax Act and recent changes in proxy statements required by the SEC Changes in healthcare and pension requirements Executive pay elements and contributing factors The difference between current and deferred compensation, including statutory requirements Various performance measurements of the income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement that are used in incentive plan payouts The book also includes appendices of selected laws, Internal Revenue Code sections, IRS revenue rulings, SEC actions, accounting interpretations, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, selected books, history of CPI, DJIA, NASDAQ, S&P 500 Averages, and Social Security taxes, as well as a glossary with more than 2,000 definitions.The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation addresses a wide range of needs and readers. Consultants and in-house pay designers will find detailed examples (supplemented with over 400 charts and tables) to trigger their own creativity.Boards of directors and compensation committees will benefit from the definitions and descriptions of various pay plans and the conditions under which they would be appropriate. Executives will find valuable tools here to help them understand their own pay plans. This is an essential resource for consultants, legislators, in-house designers, approvers, shareholders, executives, and educators.Whether you’re an executive or a designer, approver, or administrator of executive pay plans, this welcome fourth edition of the classic guide thoroughly reframes the picture of executive compensation for the modern age.

The scholarly literature on executive compensation is vast. As such, this literature provides an unparalleled resource for studying the interaction between the setting of incentives (or the attempted setting of incentives) and the behavior that is actually adduced. From this literature, there are several reasons for believing that one can set incentives in executive compensation with a high rate of success in guiding CEO behavior, and one might expect CEO compensation to be a textbook example of the successful use of incentives. Also, as executive compensation has been studied intensively in the academic literature, we might also expect the success of incentive compensation to be well-documented. Historically, however, this has been very far from the case. In Too Much Is Not Enough, Robert W. Kolb studies the performance of incentives in executive compensation across many dimensions of CEO performance. The book begins with an overview of incentives and unintended consequences. Then it focuses on the theory of incentives as applied to compensation generally, and as applied to executive compensation particularly. Subsequent chapters explore different facets of executive compensation and assess the evidence on how well incentive compensation performs in each arena. The book concludes with a final chapter that provides an overall assessment of the value of incentives in guiding executive behavior. In it, Kolb argues that incentive compensation for executives is so problematic and so prone to error that the social value of giving huge incentive compensation packages is likely to be negative on balance. In focusing on incentives, the book provides a much sought-after resource, for while there are a number of books on executive compensation, none focuses specifically on incentives. Given the recent fervor over executive compensation, this unique but logical perspective will garner much interest. And while the literature being considered and evaluated is technical, the book is written in a non-mathematical way accessible to any college-educated reader.