December 22, 2016 Thoughtful Pay Alerts
Software Company Peers – The Top Comparators
One of the key factors considered by compensation committees in setting executive pay is an understanding of practices within their competitive market for executive talent. Typically, this understanding is based on an analysis of a carefully-selected group of peer companies. While this compensation peer group can be (and often is) used to assess a wide range of metrics, key elements of the...Read MoreDecember 12, 2016 Thoughtful Pay Alerts
Market Stock Unit Practices in the Technology Sector
While historically technology companies relied heavily on stock options to provide long-term incentives to their executives, in recent years an alternative vehicle – full-value awards with vesting tied to stock price performance – has gained broad acceptance. These awards – known as market stock units (“MSUs”) – avoid many of the perceived drawbacks of traditional stock options while, at the...Read MoreDecember 1, 2016 Thoughtful Pay Alerts
Employee Stock Plan Proposals at the Tech 120
2016 was another busy year for employee stock plan proposals among the 120 largest publicly-traded technology companies primarily headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area (the “Tech 120”). This Thoughtful Pay Alert summarizes the results of our review of the Tech 120 stock plan proposals, based on the information disclosed in the companies’ proxy statement filings with the Securities and...Read MoreNovember 28, 2016 Thoughtful Pay Alerts
ISS Issues 2017 Policy Updates
Institutional Shareholder Services (“ISS”) has updated its U.S. corporate governance benchmark policy guidelines for 2017. Other than the addition of several relative financial metrics to its methodology for evaluating the link between pay and performance (see our recent Thoughtful Pay Alert, “ISS Updates ‘Pay for Performance’ Methodology” (Nov. 21, 2016), this year’s updates contain one...Read MoreNovember 25, 2016 Thoughtful Pay Alerts