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Proxy Season 2012: The Year of Pay for Performance:

As in 2011, executive compensation is the single most important corporate governance issue for companies, boards, and investors for the 2012 proxy season. This Director Notes discusses the evolving analytics and issues around pay for performance (P4P) and suggests ways for companies and their boards to analyze the alignment of P4P, counter negative recommendations by proxy advisers, and draft their proxies to obtain shareholder support for their pay programs.

In 2011, approximately 3,000 companies held their first mandatory shareholder say on pay (SOP) and say on frequency votes; approximately 1,500 “smaller reporting companies” are not required to do so until January 21, 2013. Overall, 42 companies that held SOP votes in 2011 received less than 50 percent shareholder support. More than 90 percent of companies received shareholder support of 70 percent or higher, and more than 70 percent received shareholder support of 90 percent or higher. On the issue of say on frequency, shareholders at more than 75 percent of companies supported annual SOP votes, while shareholders at a majority of the remaining companies supported triennial votes, and a few supported biennial votes. Following the votes, the vast majority of companies adopted the vote frequency preference supported by a plurality of their shareholders.

One unexpected development during the 2011 proxy season was the large volume of publicly filed disputations between public companies and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, the two most influential U.S. proxy advisers, over their negative SOP recommendations. While some of the negative recommendations and the controversies that followed were related to pay practices labeled “problematic” or “egregious” by the proxy advisers, most of the negative recommendations and controversies stemmed from negative recommendations based on those proxy advisers’ P4P voting policies.

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