TheCorporateCounsel.net

Probably the most interesting development that happened while I was on vaca last week was the one noted by Mike Melbinger in his blog on CompensationStandards.com. Mike blogged about how some of the first companies to fail to receive majority support on their SOP have been sued (as well as their compensation committee members and even their compensation consultants) in shareholder derivative suits. Not only have the early failures of this proxy season been sued, but two of the companies that failed last year were sued (one case has been settled and one is still pending). We have begun to collect the pleadings from these cases for CompensationStandards.com’s “Say-on-Pay” Practice Area.

With the ante continuing to go up, take advantage of the early bird discount now for our pair of conferences – “The Say-on-Pay Workshop: 8th Annual Executive Compensation Conference” and the “6th Annual Proxy Disclosure Conference” (here’s the agendas) – which will be held on November 1st-2nd in San Francisco and via video webcast. Register now to obtain a 25% Early Bird Discount!

Delaware Chancellor Chandler Retires

In his “Delaware Corporate & Commercial Litigation” Blog, Francis Pileggi notes that Delaware Chancellor William Chandler has retired before the completion of his term and explains the process by which a replacement will be chosen. Francis also notes the importance of not having a full bench of five members of the Delaware Court of Chancery.

AFL-CIO Launches 2011 “Executive PayWatch”

Last week, as ISS’s Ted Allen notes in this blog, the AFL-CIO began a campaign to urge shareholders to vote on say-on-pay. The blog is repeated below:

The AFL-CIO has launched the 2011 version of its Executive PayWatch Web site and is urging investors to help rein in CEO pay by participating in the advisory votes on compensation that all large and mid-cap companies will hold this year. “Although non-binding, it’s the first time that shareholders have had this opportunity,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said at a press conference on Tuesday. The labor federation is analzying corporate pay disclosures and plans to vote against the compensation practices at some companies, but hasn’t publicly identified those firms. An AFL-CIO affiliate, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, has launched a “vote no” campaign against the pay practices at Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

The PayWatch site features a searchable database that includes CEO pay information from 299 S&P 500 companies that have filed proxy materials. According to the labor federation, the average 2010 compensation at those firms was $11.4 million, up 23 percent from 2009. On average, these pay packages included $3.8 million in stock awards, $2.4 million in stock options, $2.4 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, $1.2 million in pension and deferred compensation, $1.1 million in salary, a $251,413 bonus, and $215,911 in other compensation. Trumka said the average total compensation for S&P 500 CEOs is now about 343 times that of the average American worker, up from 42 times in 1980. “We believe that executive pay has gotten out of whack,” he said.

AFL-CIO officials also expressed concern that House Republicans had introduced legislation to repeal another Dodd-Frank Act provision that would require companies to disclose the ratio between the total compensation received by the CEO and the median pay received by the firm’s employees. Corporate advocates have denounced this provision, arguing that it would be extremely costly to collect this data, and that the foreign and part-time employees should be excluded from this calculation. Trumka denounced this attempt to “water down” Dodd-Frank and said this pay ratio disclosure “would have a profound impact” and prod boards to set compensation based on a company’s own organizational needs, rather than based on the pay at other companies.

The SEC has not yet proposed rules to implement this provision but plans to do later during the second half of the year. The AFL-CIO is urging the commission to require companies to include both their foreign and part-time workers in the pay ratio calculations. The AFL-CIO’s Paywatch site specifically criticized the pay practices of six companies: Occidental Petroleum, Hewlett-Packard, Reynolds American, Rite Aid, Abercrombie & Fitch, and PulteGroup.

Also see Vanessa Schoenthaler’s blog about the PayWatch site.

– Broc Romanek