Smoothing tends to serve a good purpose where the CEO's pay mix leans toward stock grants, but not where option grants predominate, a new study finds.
At large companies, male CFOs tend to earn more money than their female counterparts. The opposite is true for chief executives.
Each year dozens of shareholder proposals seek to quash potential conflicts of interest by calling for an independent chair. But they hardly ever pass.
Quarters when CEO equity awards vest coincide with corporate actions that pump up stock prices briefly while damaging the company's long-term value.
It was the biggest gain in compensation for chief executives in three years, Equilar reports.
At its worst, high pay may incentivize wrongdoing by executives to meet performance benchmarks, the AFL-CIO contends.
Companies can expect a lot of questions from employees when the requirement to disclose the ratio takes effect in 2018.
In addition, S&P 500 CEOs who held both the chairperson and CEO slots were paid 29% more on average, says Institutional Shareholder Services.
Finance chiefs got higher-percentage raises in 2014, yet fell further behind on a raw-dollar basis.
