An executive of a publicly-traded company would not have anticipated today's market volatility and depressed stock price when he or she entered into a 10b5-1 trading plan in 2019.  As a result, this executive will probably want to amend or terminate such trading plan.  The purpose of this Post is to provide a quick reminder of the applicable issues that should be considered.  This Post is Part 6 of a 7-Part series addressing compensation adjustments that Compensation Committees could consider in order to continue to incent and retain their executive officers in today’s economy.

The purpose of this Post is remind publicly-traded companies to revisit their stock ownership policies to determine whether a temporary waiver of the policy requirements is advisable.  This Post is Part 5 of a 7-Part series addressing compensation adjustments that Compensation Committees could consider in order to continue to incent and retain their executive officers in today’s economy.

Stock Ownership Policies Typically Denominated in Dollars

Equity ownership goals within stock ownership policies are typically denominated in shares or dollars (the latter being a fixed ...

The purpose of this Post is to highlight whether Compensation Committees should be offering retention packages to their executive officers to discourage their being poached by another company.  This Post is Part 4 of a 7-Part series addressing compensation adjustments that Compensation Committees could consider in order to continue to incent and retain their executive officers in today’s economy.

Background

Many executives are suffering from depressed realizable pay levels.  This makes sense because a performance-driven compensation model would weight most of an ...

This post is part of a 7-part series addressing compensation adjustments that Compensation Committees could consider in order to continue to incent and retain their executive officers in today’s economy.  The titles of each of the 7-parts in this series are listed at the bottom of this post.   This Part 3 is entitled “Address Outstanding Performance-Based Equity Awards," and provides some alternatives that Compensation Committees could consider with respect to outstanding performance-based equity awards that have currently unachievable performance goals.  Such alternatives include (listed in no particular order, and not an exhaustive list):

This post is part of a 7-part series addressing compensation adjustments that Compensation Committees could consider in order to continue to incent and retain their executive officers in today's economy.  The titles of each of the 7-parts in this series are listed at the bottom of this post.   This Part 2 is entitled "Consider Changes to Increase Cash Flow," and provides some ideas that a Compensation Committee could implement that could work to increase the company's cash flow and produce positive proxy disclosure.  Such ideas are (listed in no particular order, and not an exhaustive list):

Today’s economic environment has resulted in substantial loss of value to many shareholders and executives of publicly traded companies (i.e., the latter losing substantial value in their stock holdings, and too, losing prospective realizable pay as a result of unattainable performance goals within their outstanding performance-based awards).  In most situations, the shareholders and the executives are aligned in such loss.  But a problem is that substantial loss at the executive level could increase undesired poaching and turnover of key executives at a time when executives should be focused on navigating the company through a reopening of the United States economy.  To overcome this problem, compensation committees of publicly traded companies ("Compensation Committees") will likely need to consider adjustments to the company’s compensation framework in order to continue to incent and retain executives.  To that end, this Part 1 (of a 7-part series) provides thoughts that the Compensation Committee should consider with respect to upcoming equity grants.

Just a quick update that on April 8, 2020, Institutional Shareholder Services ("ISS") published policy guidance reflecting certain adjustments due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The guidance addresses how ISS's benchmark and voting policies may be applied in this new area of uncertainty.  In many cases, the guidance merely reiterates that ISS will respond to corporate actions on a case-by-case basis.  To address the topic, we published a client alert entitled "ISS Issues COVID-19 Guidance on Benchmark and Voting Policies."

On a separate note, two of my partners (Steven Haas

Join us on April 9, 2020 from 10:00 am to 11:00 am Central for our FREE monthly webinar on "Executive Compensation Considerations in Light of Market Volatility, Stock Prices and the Unknown," where we will discuss compensatory issues to consider as a result of failed (or failing) performance-based compensation metrics and lost value to the issuer's long-term shareholders, including:

• Considerations with respect to annual incentives for 2020;
• Thoughts with respect to outstanding performance-based equity awards where the performance conditions are not likely to be attained ...

Many publicly-traded issuers in today’s environment have outstanding equity awards with performance goals that are unlikely to be achieved.  In response, Compensation Committees of such issuers will need to strike a balance between incentivizing/retaining executives and dealing with the stark reality that shareholders have lost substantial value.  To that end, Compensation Committees are likely to discuss whether it makes sense to revise performance metrics for outstanding equity awards.  The purpose of this Post is to highlight that revising performance metrics of ...

To help issuers prepare for the upcoming proxy season, and as a follow-up to our prior post entitled "Compensation Considerations for the 2020 Proxy Season," we are hosting a FREE webinar entitled "Upcoming Proxy Season: Compensatory Thoughts from ISS (an Annual Program)" on Thursday, January 16, 2020 from 10:00 am to 11:00 am Central [Register here].  The purpose of this webinar is to discuss compensatory thoughts and trends of institutional shareholder advisory services such as ISS, including:

• New compensation pronouncements and positions of ISS since the 2019 proxy season;