Currently, many of these bonuses are shrouded in vague language, according to US-based nonprofit As You Sow, which focuses on investor issues ranging from climate change to gender inequalities. “We want to know that executives aren’t simply being rewarded, for instance, for climate metrics they’ve already met,” said Danielle Fugere, As You Sow’s president and chief counsel. Read More →
Read More“You get the feeling when you read the proxy statements that these executives are trying to squeeze as much personal wealth from the company as they can,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. Read More →
Read MoreBarron’s cited Rosanna Landis Weaver, a program manager at shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, who claims that companies will sometimes set ESG bonus targets for "dealing with low-hanging fruit." "Everybody should be having these town halls, this isn’t what we should be paying extra for," she told the Barron’s. Read More →
Read MoreCompanies sometimes set ESG bonus targets for “dealing with low-hanging fruit,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver, a program manager at shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, which pushes for stricter criteria. Read More →
Read More“Compensation for these CEOs never goes down in bad times as much as it goes up in good times,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. “When things are going well, boards always say, ‘Oh, my God, they’re all geniuses,’ and when things go bad it’s always blamed on external factors and not the person in charge.”. Read More →
Read MoreCompanies that received failing grades included no tie between CEO pay and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Others didn’t provide enough of an incentive to be meaningful, authors said. “A de minimis thing isn’t useful,” said Rosanna Landis Weaver, As You Sow’s director of wage justice and executive pay. “Our point, in general, is it’s important to do this right.” Read More →
Read MoreThat’s because Zaslav just scurried to the top of the list of America’s most overpaid chief executives published annually by the consumer advocacy group As You Sow. In 2021, when the total shareholder return of Zaslav’s company (then known as Discovery) declined by 22%, Zaslav’s compensation rocketed up to $246.6 million from $37.7 million the year before, a gain of 554%. Read More →
Read MorePoor pay designs "eventually come home to roost," said Rosanna Landis Weaver, a co-author of the annual study of "Overpaid CEOs" widely read by pay experts, especially as some companies award their leaders massive share packages.
Read MoreBut an investor advocacy group says some of the nation’s most well-known companies overpaid their chief executives. A new report from As You Sow listed 100 “overpaid” CEOs who received high compensation in 2022 despite mixed shareholder returns for their companies. Read More →
Read MoreElon Musk is keeping Delaware Chancery Court busy. The same judge who shepherded months of contentious discovery in the billionaire’s legal battle with Twitter will preside at trial in a shareholder lawsuit against Tesla’s board over his 2018 pay package, calling it “the largest in human history.” “It’s a very unusual filing. But what about Elon Musk isn’t unusual?” said Rosanna Landis-Weaver, a governance and compensation expert for shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. Read More →
Read MoreShareholder advocacy organization As You Sow (AYS) has released a report finding that, while more and more companies say they link CEO pay to climate-change-mitigation and emissions-reduction goals, such incentives generally lack meaningful metrics or sufficient compensation to incentivize climate progress. Read More →
Read MoreAs You Sow analyzed the 2021 chief executive officer compensation packages of 47 US companies included in the Climate Action 100+ initiative, an investor-led program to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters curb their footprints. It found that many firms didn’t tie CEO pay to climate metrics, and when they did, it’s wasn’t to a level that would prompt bosses to meaningfully reduce emissions. Read More →
Read More“Investors are rightly getting frustrated with the excessive pay given to executives,” says Rosanna Weaver, who analyzes executive compensation shareholder proposals for As You Sow, a non-profit shareholder advocacy organization. “We’re seeing a shift in that some shareholders are flat out saying this pay is too much.” Read More →
Read More“It’s in people’s self-interest to try to contain this,” Rosanna Landis Weaver, wage justice and executive pay program senior manager at As You Sow, a nonprofit shareholder-advocacy group, told Fortune in May. “The political instability created by income inequality is a real danger. It’s a danger to democracy, and it’s a danger to capitalism.” Read More →
Read More“It’s in people’s self-interest to try to contain this,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver, wage justice and executive pay program senior manager at As You Sow, a non-profit shareholder-advocacy group. “The political instability that is created by income inequality is a real danger. It’s a danger to democracy, and it’s a danger to capitalism.” Read More →
Read More“I am a capitalist. I’m for improving capitalism, not throwing it out,” says As You Sow’s Weaver. “It’s in people’s self-interest to try to contain this—because the political instability that is created by income inequality is a real danger. It’s a danger to democracy, and it’s a danger to capitalism.” Read More →
Read MoreFor example, AT&T shareholders voted against an executive compensation measure in April. In 2021, 16 companies had executive pay packages rejected by shareholders, according to As You Sow, an activist investor group. Read More →
Read MoreAs You Sow used shareholder returns—or the lack thereof—to compile a list of the most overpaid CEOs in corporate America. (The ranking is based on pay packages awarded in the year prior to June 30, 2021.) But the tally is more than just a “who’s who” of corporate moneybags. What sticks out most from an already onerous ranking are those chiefs of brands that suffered severely during the pandemic—some having laid off employees—yet still received their bushel of cash.
Read MoreThe As You Sow report looks at three factors in determining if CEOs earned their pay. First, HIP calculates how much CEOs should have earned in pay based on total shareholder return over the past five years. Any salary (including benefits, perks, and stock options) over that amount was characterized as excess pay. Second, As You Sow analyzed shareholder votes on pay for each company, looking at the percentage of shares that voted against the pay. Finally, both As You Sow and HIP evaluated the CEO-to-worker pay ratios for each company. Read More →
Read More“There’s never been a year with this number of high opposition votes against pay in the eight years of this report,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver, the report’s lead author. “Some boards acted as if pay for performance didn’t matter when COVID-19 was involved, and shareholders angrily rejected those packages.” But As You Sow argues that it’s time for more shareholders to reject excessive executive compensation simply because it’s “not in the best interests of shareholders,” and perhaps also immoral. Read More →
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