Barron’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 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 MoreIn recent years, both the World Economic Forum and Business Roundtable, pre-Covid, embraced stakeholder capitalism over shareholder capitalism to the exclusion of every other interest. Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, which has taken on many companies over the years in proxy battles focused on ESG issues, says the tide it not turning back to Milton Friedman’s view of the world. Read More →
Read More"Too often when companies do this, it's a very small percentage of CEO annual pay. And it can become a reward for something they would do anyway," says Rosanna Landis Weaver, who tracks governance and compensation at investor advocacy group As You Sow. Read More →
Read More“We are in the midst of a major transformation,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a nonprofit focused on shareholder advocacy. While these votes are typically non-binding, boards could face a no-confidence vote from governance groups if they ignore them. “Investors who have traditionally abdicated their power have begun to use their power,” Behar said. Read More →
Read More“Shareholders have no patience for companies that are insulating executives from the effects of COVID,” said Rosanna Landis-Weaver, who authors an annual report urging opposition to CEO pay packages for As You Sow, in an interview. Read More →
Read More“They never make those statements to the upside. When external events lead to windfalls or high pay, you don’t see companies adjusting for that,” said Rosanna Landis-Weaver, a corporate governance and compensation expert with As You Sow, a leading shareholder advocacy nonprofit. “They generally only ever make adjustments in one direction.” Read More →
Read More“These are the last people that need to have their pay accommodated,” said Rosanna Landis Weaver, a program manager at As You Sow, a non-profit focused on shareholder advocacy. “If it’s heads I win, tails I win almost as much -- that’s not pay-for-performance. It’s just ridiculous.” Read More →
Read More“It was largely cosmetic,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver, program manager of the CEO pay program at shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. “Most of these companies issued huge press releases announcing they were doing something good by getting rid of their CEO salaries. They didn’t make big announcements when those salaries returned.” Read More →
Read More"We believe that compensation drives outcomes," says Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, a nonprofit that works in shareholder activism. "So when an executive team is incentivized to actually accomplish a goal, then they're more likely to do so." Read More →
Read More"I think [Gorsky's] pay was excessive," said Rosanna Landis Weaver, who analyzes executive compensation at As You Sow, a nonprofit that promotes shareholder advocacy on inequality, the environment and other issues. Read More →
Read MorePichai tops the new list of “100 Most Overpaid CEOs,” the seventh annual report published by As You Sow, a nonprofit promoting corporate social responsibility through shareholder advocacy. The report, subtitled “Are Fund Managers Asleep at the Wheel?” finds that, while shareholder opposition to this excess is growing, many of the biggest financial fiduciaries still did not vote against excessive CEO pay in last year’s annual shareholder meetings. Read More →
Read MoreCEOs like Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella are among the top 100 most overpaid CEOs, according to a new report from As You Sow.
It's no secret that CEOs of S&P 500 companies make good money. However, As You Sow's list doesn't rank by the size of a CEO's salary. Instead, the corporate responsibility non-profit uses different metrics to identify whether or not a CEO is being overpaid. Read More →
Read MoreAn effective incentive needs to be something measurable, and it needs to be tied to something the recipient of the incentive can actually control, according to Rosanna Landis Weaver, executive compensation program manager for As You Sow. With respect to utility decarbonization, she said she also looks for incentives that reward actions beyond business as usual. Otherwise, Weaver said, the incentive only serves to inflate CEO compensation without producing meaningful change. Read More →
Read MoreShareholders are giving most companies an overwhelming thumbs up. But the scrutiny has helped curb some of the most egregious practices in recent years, such as companies paying the equivalent of CEOs’ income taxes, said Rosanna Landis Weaver, program manager of executive compensation at As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy group. Read More →
Read MorePerformance goals set early this year by the boards of calendar-year companies may be largely irrelevant since the Covid-19 pandemic set the stock market spiraling and companies scrambling. Read More →
Read MoreCompensation linked to stock is meant to align the interests of executives with that of shareholders and companies note that stock and option awards are “at risk.” Some of them may be since the direction of the stock price determines the payout. But they are granted with an estimated value – what shows up in the proxy pay table. For much of the last decade, due to an extended bull market, that estimate has ended up being too low compared with where the stock is trading when the grants are ultimately cashed in, says Rosanna Landis-Weaver, program manager at shareholder advocacy group As You Sow. Read More →
Read MoreFor anyone wondering whether a company’s prosperity is being shared with workers in the form of rising median pay, the mandated reports may provide few real answers. “That’s unfortunate,” said Rosanna Landis Weaver of As You Sow, a nonprofit that lobbied for the disclosure rule. “There just seems to be a deep reluctance to disclose the inequalities that exist within corporations. Companies have resisted this rule for year and years and years — and they are still.” Read More →
Read MoreIf American CEO compensation is indeed tied to company performance, many are getting overpaid, according to one corporate responsibility research group. Among them are the chiefs of JPMorgan, Ameriprise, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, according to As You Sow’s new report. Read More →
Read More"There’s an increasing awareness that these CEO pay votes really do matter. Very smart people at a variety of funds are really digging deeply into this issue and revamping their proxy voting guidelines," said Rosanna Landis Weaver, program manager of executive compensation at As You Sow. "After six years of our report, we see this trend has continued. Private conversations, known as engagements, are insufficient to deal with the systemic problems." Read More →
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