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On November 14, Glass Lewis (“GL”) released its policy updates for annual shareholder meetings held after January 1, 2025.  Updates and clarifications to the United States policy guidelines that impact GL’s evaluation of proposals related to Say-on-Pay, re-election of Compensation Committee members, and other compensation-related items are summarized in this blog posting. 

An analysis of multi-year trends in non-employee director compensation revealed that approximately 35% - 40% of companies made program adjustments in any given year. Most elected to increase the equity component only or coupled increases in the cash component with a corresponding increase in equity. 

On August 20, in Ryan, LLC v. FTC a federal district judge in Texas blocked the FTC’s rule generally banning noncompetition agreements.  With this decision, the FTC’s rule is now barred from taking effect nationwide, which had been scheduled for September 4.  The decision comes after the same Texas judge issued a preliminary injunction in July barring the FTC from enforcing its rule to the parties in the case.

This marks the fourth time we have written about the FTC’s new rule generally banning the use of noncompetition clauses in the employment context, reflecting the far-reaching nature of the noncompete rule and uncertainties about whether it will go into effect on September 4 and be ultimately upheld. 

Two district courts have now ruled on the legality of the FTC’s general ban on non-compete agreements.  A decision by a federal district in Texas issued a preliminary injunction barring the FTC from enforcing the rule.  A federal district court in Pennsylvania has just reached the opposite conclusion.

In the face of stock price volatility, determining the size of equity awards can be a challenging task for companies. Swings in stock price can result in substantial changes in the number of shares delivered year-over-year as well as high equity burn rates and subsequent share plan reserve challenges. FW Cook analyzed the practices of US-based technology and technology-enabled companies that IPOed during 2020 and 2021, excluding companies with <$100M market cap at IPO.

In June 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the SEC acted arbitrarily and capriciously in removing its previously approved notice-and-awareness requirements for proxy advisory firms, violating the Administrative Procedure Act.

The SEC has four rules under consideration relevant to executive compensation matters. In each case the date of SEC action has been postponed from the dates previously announced in the Fall 2023 Regulatory Agenda.  

In October 2022, the SEC adopted final clawback rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, which required companies listed on the NYSE and Nasdaq to adopt a clawback policy to recover excess incentive compensation from current and former executive officers in the event of a financial restatement.

Our blog of April 24 reported on the finalization by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of a rule generally barring post-employment non-compete provisions in employment arrangements.  The rule is scheduled to be effective September 4.  At the time of our blog, at least two cases had been filed challenging the FTC’s authority to issue the rule.

As widely expected, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted on April 23 to issue a rule generally barring post-employment non-compete provisions in employment arrangements.  The new rule is relatively short, taking up eight pages in a 570-page rule release.  But, as the total length of the release indicates, there are many nuances to consider. 

As part of its commitment to investor transparency, BlackRock recently announced a U.S. Pilot Program that would give certain individual retail investors the ability to participate in the “Voting Choice” program, which enables individual investors to vote based on guidelines other than BlackRock’s internal policy-driven position.

The California Legislature enacted another bill affecting contracts with noncompete clauses, Assembly Bill 1076.  AB 1076 states it is declaratory of existing law but contains new language requiring certain employee notifications by February 14, 2024, plus penalties for noncompliance.  A flurry of law firm bulletins have recently been telling employers to review their contracts and make the necessary notifications.  Since not all clients may have seen these bulletins, and the scope of SB 699 has not yet been tested, we want to describe what’s going on.

For the most recently reported fiscal year (2022), the median CEO pay ratio for S&P 500 companies was 185:1, down from 193:1 for fiscal 2021, but up from 178:1 and 181:1 for fiscal years 2019 and 2020, respectively. The 25th and 75th percentile CEO pay ratios for fiscal 2022 also declined from the prior year, falling in line with fiscal year 2020 levels.

On November 21st, the SEC issued 10 new or revised Compliance & Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs) relating to the Pay Versus Performance (PvP) rule and disclosure, supplementing the PvP CDIs previously issued by the SEC.

We have identified one CDI that may have the greatest impact and examine it here. 

Last month we blogged that the SEC had just issued 10 new Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs) with respect to the application of the new Pay Versus Performce rule (PvP Rule) and the related table (PvP Table).  We have identified two that warrant further discussion, CDI 128D.18 and CDI 128D.22.  While issuers are, of course, affected by the other CDIs, we think these two may have the greatest impact. 

Recent data through October 1st illustrate some of the trends and outcomes of 2023 SOP, director nominee, and equity plan votes and the impact of ISS recommendations. 

On September 27th, the SEC issued 10 new Compliance & Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs) relating to the pay-versus-performance (PVP) disclosure rules. The new PVP CDIs supplement the 15 CDIs previously issued by the SEC on February 10, 2023.

FW Cook conducted its fourth annual study on the use of ESG measures in annual and long-term incentive plans among the largest U.S. public companies. This year’s study indicates that the incorporation of ESG measures within incentive compensation plans among large cap companies has reached a plateau.

Listed companies share a growing sense of frustration about the pressure to align with an artificial list of “best practices” defined by governance professionals who may not adequately understand the unique challenges facing a business.

In a welcome development, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market have amended their previously proposed listing standards to provide that the clawback listing standards mandated under the Dodd-Frank Act will become effective on October 2, 2023. Accordingly, NYSE and Nasdaq listed companies will have until December 1, 2023 (i.e., 60 days after the effective date) to adopt a compliant clawback policy.

Recent conversations between SEC staff and executive compensation practitioners suggest that the SEC is leaning toward treating June 11, 2023, as the date for final action (actually, June 9 since June 11 is a Sunday).  While practitioners have strongly lobbied for the SEC to delay action until the absolute deadline of November 28, 2023, the SEC so far appears unpersuaded.

On October 26, 2022, the SEC adopted a final rule (the “Clawback Rule”) with respect to the new clawback requirements mandated by section 954 of the Dodd-Frank Act.  A couple of recent developments with respect to the Clawback Rule merit brief mention.  

On February 10, 2023, the SEC issued much-awaited additional guidance  on how to implement the pay versus performance disclosure rules that were adopted on August 25, 2022.  While additional governmental guidance is generally welcome, the timing of this guidance at the beginning of “proxy season” presents a challenge as companies have had to forge ahead in the past few months and already made decisions with respect to the form and content of their PVP disclosures.  These decisions will now need to be revisited in many cases. 

Proxy advisor Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) published its 2023 Proxy Voting Guidelines, which include its benchmark policy changes with respect to U.S. executive compensation. The 2023 policy updates will become effective for meetings on or after February 1, 2023.

On December 14, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted amendments regarding Rule 10b5-1 insider trading plans and related disclosures.

In mid-November, Glass Lewis (“GL”) released its policy updates for shareholder meetings held after January 1, 2023.  Updates and clarifications to the United States and ESG Initiatives policy guidelines that impact GL’s evaluation of proposals related to Say-on-Pay, re-election of Compensation Committee members, and other compensation-related items are summarized in this blog.

On October 26, 2022, the SEC published final clawback rules to implement Section 954 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank). The rules, which were originally proposed in 2015, were adopted substantially as proposed and require companies to adopt policies for the recoupment of erroneously awarded incentive-based compensation in the event of a triggering restatement, regardless of whether the executive was at fault or engaged in any misconduct. 

This blog follows up on our recent alert summarizing the new SEC rule generally requiring that a pay versus performance (PVP) table be added to proxy statements for fiscal years ending after December 15, 2022.  It presents a table constructed by Infinite Equity (with input from us) that may be of some interest to companies that issue long-term equity awards where the performance metric is relative total shareholder return (rTSR). 

On August 25th, the SEC adopted final rules implementing the pay versus performance disclosure requirement as required by the Dodd-Frank Act. This is one of the most significant SEC developments in the executive compensation arena in the last decade.  Compliance in the first year will no doubt be a challenge for companies; especially around completely new requirements such as identifying the most important financial measures used to link pay and performance and calculating “actually paid” compensation.  We will be following up with a more detailed analysis of the rules in the near term.

For the most recently reported fiscal year (2021), median CEO pay ratio for S&P 500 companies was 193:1, up from 181:1 for fiscal 2020, and 178:1 for fiscal 2019.

On July 13, 2022, the SEC proposed amendments to the proxy rules that would narrow the basis on which companies may exclude shareholder proposals from their proxy statements.

On June 22, 2022, the SEC released its upcoming rulemaking calendar, referred to as the 2022 Regulatory Flex Agenda. We note that final rules on two Dodd-Frank compensation-related items – listing standards for recovery of erroneously awarded compensation (i.e., the clawback rules) and pay for performance disclosure – are scheduled for October 2022.

S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI, Inc. recently announced changes to the Global Industry Classification Standard (“GICS”) structure that will go into effect on March 17, 2023. 

ISS and Glass Lewis recently issued policy updates for the 2022 proxy season. Compensation policy updates mostly represent expansions on and/or clarifications of current practices including the restoration of many pre-COVID compensation-related voting policies and a change in ISS burn rate calculations effective for 2023.

On November 29th, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 120 (“SAB 120”) regarding the valuation of “spring-loaded” awards to executives. SAB 120 updates previous SEC staff guidance under Topic 14: Share-Based Payments that are accounted for under Accounting Standards Codification Topic 718 - Stock Compensation.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has announced that they are accepting updated self-selected peer group submissions from U.S. and Canadian companies with annual meetings between February 1, 2022 to September 15, 2022, and European companies with meetings between February 1, 2022 and January 31, 2023.

Compensation peer group composition has been a hot topic with our clients of late due to the impact of a variety of strategic factors, including: industry consolidation, uneven impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on companies, and blurring of lines between industries due to technology and digitalization.

Our clients are actively discussing how best to signal to investors and other stakeholders the importance of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) objectives, and a variety of factors -- the global pandemic, climate change, social justice concerns -- are contributing to a rapid increase in the use of such metrics in executive incentive plans.

The nature of work has shifted rapidly over the past 18 months – and with it, battle lines in the war for talent. Pandemic actions that were initially implemented for safety, primarily work-from-anywhere policies, have fundamentally changed how employees view their relationships with employers.

On August 6, 2021, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s Board Diversity Rule. The rule is the culmination of efforts initiated by Nasdaq in December 2020 to require Nasdaq-listed companies to publicly disclose information about the diversity makeup of boards of directors.

The SEC's division of corporation finance will not recommend enforcement actions related to last year’s proxy-voting advice and solicitation rules while the commission weighs the direction of additional regulatory action in this area.

Through May 13th, about half of S&P 500 companies (251 companies) have held their 2021 annual advisory shareholder vote on executive compensation (“Say-on-Pay”). Twelve companies have already failed, approaching the record number of failures (13 in 2012). S&P 500 companies in 2021 are on pace to double the 2020 Say-on-Pay failure rate (11 companies) and triple the failure rates from 2019 and 2018 (7 each).

ISS recently released updates to its governance scoring model, ISS ESG Governance QualityScore (“QualityScore”), which monitors governance-related risk across four pillars: Audit & Risk Oversight, Board Structure, Compensation and Shareholder Rights.

On January 26, Glass Lewis issued illustrative guidance on how the firm will apply its voting policies to executive compensation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The operating landscape for certain companies has shifted significantly due to the pandemic making supplemental policy guidance necessary.

ISS recently published its U.S. Equity Plan Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Compensation Policy FAQs for the 2021 proxy season. Outside of a change to the high concern threshold impacting one of ISS’ quantitative pay-for-performance screens, the FAQs do not contain material changes from the prior release of policy updates that were issued in November.

ISS and Glass Lewis recently issued policy updates for the 2021 proxy season.  The updates mostly represent expansions and/or clarifications of current policies.

On November 2, 2020, Institutional Shareholder Services notified companies that, for shareholder meetings held on or after January 1, 2021, ISS will no longer provide U.S.-based, S&P 500 companies the opportunity to review a draft version of their proxy research reports.

On October 15, ISS released preliminary FAQs to provide general guidance on how they intend to qualitatively evaluate pay actions in response to COVID-19.  Consistent with historical practice, an elevated concern from the quantitative screen will result in a more in-depth qualitative review of the company's pay programs and practices.  However, the qualitative evaluation will take into consideration the pandemic’s impact on company operations.

FW Cook is actively tracking the year-end compensation decisions made by S&P 1500 companies with fiscal years ending in April, May and June as they publish their 2020 proxy statements to provide insight as to how calendar year companies may approach year-end decisions.  Preliminary findings indicate that use of positive discretion to increase payouts in the short- and long-term incentive plans just completed is limited. However, at the companies that have exercised such discretion, the increase in payouts is sizable.

On September 24, Institutional Shareholder Services published the results of its annual policy survey open to institutional investors and non-investors. Findings from the survey inform potential policy changes for the upcoming year. This summer’s survey collected compensation-related feedback on applying flexibility in compensation programs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and incorporating metrics into incentive plans to address climate change risk.

While much of the focus today is on restarting segments of the economy and developing action plans to reopen businesses, history outside of corporate America teaches us important lessons on how incentives can play a role in driving effective outcomes. It shows us that incentives, not just rules, may be the solution businesses need.

Media coverage fosters a perception that pay concessions among senior management and independent board members are widespread. We are tracking public disclosures and, through April 17, less than 10% of the Russell 3000 and 15% of the S&P 500 companies have taken action to reduce pay.

Executive pay in the midst of the pandemic presents an obvious dilemma. On the one hand, it would be a stretch to blame fairly management teams for most of the adverse financial performance that will stretch across a broad range of industries. On the other, they cannot escape the consequences either.

ISS recently released initial policy guidance on how the firm will apply ISS benchmark or voting policies for upcoming annual general meetings (AGMs) and whether there will be any changes due to the pandemic.

Glass Lewis recently announced that it has fully launched the Report Feedback System (RFS), a pilot program introduced last year in the US and Australia. RFS gives companies the opportunity to respond to Glass Lewis’ proxy research and voting recommendations with unedited feedback to be included in the proxy advisor’s research reports, which are distributed to its institutional investor clients.

Glass Lewis recently released a policy note outlining the firm’s approach and expectations on several governance areas that are likely to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Most companies either have already acted and expect to apply appropriate judgement at year end or are waiting for additional business and stock-market clarity that they hope will come by mid-year. A growing list of companies in hard-hit sectors including airlines, energy, hospitality, and retailing also are freezing or reducing executive pay for liquidity and alignment with rank-and-file employees.  Meanwhile, further implications are emerging. A list of ten follows, along with initial thoughts on the potential impact:

Considering the current market volatility, Dan Ryterband, CEO, and George Paulin, Chairman of FW Cook, share their perspective on various issues companies are now facing.

Equity dilution shows the portion of a company that is shared with its employees and is a key measure for venture-backed technology companies that rely on skilled human capital to innovate and grow. FW Cook’s database of recent U.S. IPOs provides a window into the typical amount of equity compensation shared with pre-IPO employees, depending on size or location.

A common issue in recruiting executives is how to handle the value of unvested equity awards forfeited by the applicant if he or she joins the new employer. One would think that the logical way for the new employer to approach the issue is simply to ask the applicant for a schedule of outstanding equity awards, so that the new employer can come up with replacement grants to keep the applicant partially or fully whole.

Glass Lewis recently announced changes to its pay-for-performance peer group methodology for 2020. Historically, Glass Lewis relied on Equilar’s “peers of peers” approach that focused on the strength of connections between a filer and potential peers. Going forward, Glass Lewis will incorporate a more robust approach that incorporates eight different factors when assessing the appropriateness of a single peer.

ISS recently published its U.S. Equity Plan Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Compensation Policy FAQs.  There are no significant changes from the prior release of preliminary FAQs and policy updates that were issued in November.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recently published preliminary compensation policy FAQs that contain significant modifications to two of their three quantitative pay-for-performance tests and a few additional details that were not covered in our blog on 2020 policy updates.

The two major proxy advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, recently released policy updates for the 2020 proxy season.  Overall, the updates are minor and mostly represent codifications and clarifications of current, or previously announced, policies.

On August 21, 2019, in a 3-2 vote along party lines, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued guidance to investment advisers regarding their voting responsibilities, in particular when engaging proxy advisory firms such as Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis.

On July 1, 2019, a new law passed in California (Assembly Bill 91) that selectively conformed the California tax code to some of the federal code changes made by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (Tax Act).  Notably, the Tax Act eliminated the qualified performance-based compensation exception to the $1 million annual limitation on the deductibility of compensation paid to a covered employee under Section 162(m), except for compensation paid pursuant to grandfathered contracts. 

Glass Lewis recently announced a new pilot program for the 2019 proxy season intended to facilitate communication among companies, proponents of shareholder proposals and investors. The Report Feedback Statement (“RFS”) is a subscription service that provides public companies and shareholder proponents the opportunity to submit feedback about Glass Lewis’ analysis of their proposals in advance of the voting deadline, and have those comments delivered directly to investors who subscribe to Glass Lewis’ research or voting services.

The overarching goal of incentive compensation plan design is, of course, to incentivize management to focus on value creation for shareholders. Recent developments concerning corporate “sustainability” suggest that compensation committees of public company boards of directors, as well as human resources executives, should consider the use of metrics developed to measure sustainability in incentive plans.

On December 18, 2018, the SEC approved final rules requiring the disclosure of hedging policies in annual proxy statements. The rules, which become effective for fiscal years beginning on or after July 1, 2019, are an implementation of a Dodd-Frank mandate. The rules do not require that companies have a hedging policy or practice in place; rather, the rules relate only to disclosure.

Following the recent publication of its U.S. Compensation Policy Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), ISS just released FAQs containing new and materially updated questions for evaluating equity plans for the 2019 proxy season.

ISS recently published its U.S. Compensation Policy Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), which contain significant changes from the prior release of preliminary FAQs issued in November.  Most notably, ISS updated its list of problematic practices that will likely result in an adverse say-on-pay (SOP) recommendation.  It now includes new or materially amended agreements that provide for “problematic” good reason definitions (and related severance). 

On October 18, 2018, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) commenced a two-week consultation period on potential updates to its benchmark voting policy for 2019. There are a total of nine U.S. and international draft policy updates for consideration, of which two relate to U.S. governance matters: Financial Performance Assessment methodology and Board gender diversity.

Effective September 28, 2018, S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI, Inc. will implement major changes to their Global Industry Classification Standard (“GICS”) structure that will primarily impact media and technology companies.  While such changes may have implications for the development of comparative peer groups used by companies in competitive analyses of pay levels and practices, they are likely to have a more significant impact on the peer groups developed by proxy advisors such as Institutional Shareholder Services (“ISS”), which are a key factor in their vote recommendations on executive compensation issues.

On Friday, August 10, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a $1.1B economic development bill, which included The Massachusetts Noncompetition Agreement Act. The Act, effective October 1, 2018, limits the use and form of non-compete agreements for employees in Massachusetts (regardless of where the employer is headquartered), and applies to non-competes executed on or after October 1, 2018.

On July 30, ISS released its annual policy survey to solicit market feedback for its 2019 policy updates. Per ISS Corporate Solutions, “The on-line policy survey is designed to gather feedback from a wide range of stakeholders to give ISS guidance on where to set policy in areas that are emerging or unclear.” The two questions covered on the topic of compensation relate to ISS' quantitative pay-for-performance test and non-employee director compensation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday June 28, 2018 voted to ease the thresholds for qualifying for “smaller reporting company” (SRC) status. Under the new rules, SRCs are defined as companies with less than $250 million in publicly traded shares (up from $75 million), or less than $100 million in revenues for the previous fiscal year (up from $50 million) and less than $700 million in publicly traded shares. The SEC estimates that nearly 1,000 companies will meet these relaxed thresholds.

The CEO pay ratio disclosure, enacted in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, is the executive compensation item getting the most attention this proxy season. Despite strong opposition on many fronts, the pay ratio lived to see the light of day and is included for the first time in 2018 proxy statements for companies with fiscal years starting on or after January 1, 2017 (Emerging Growth Companies and certain other issuers are exempted from the ratio disclosure). Although the focus of much commentary and analysis, the implications of this new piece of public information remain to be seen.

As we previously discussed, under the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the new 21% corporate tax rate applies on a blended basis to fiscal year companies (i.e., companies whose taxable years do not end on December 31st). The IRS has now issued guidance for how fiscal year companies can calculate the amount of federal income tax they owe.

Understanding investor expectations is key to carrying out a successful outreach campaign.  In our previous blog post titled "Shareholder Outreach and the Evolving Role of Investor Stewardship" we discussed how investors’ evolving view on stewardship is changing their expectations for ongoing engagement with portfolio companies as they begin to take a more holistic view of their investments.  In this second installment of our three-part blog series, we discuss the evolving focus on executive compensation, as well as areas beyond compensation that may arise during shareholder outreach.

Many believe that Elon Musk already has revolutionized automotive technology, rocketry, and solar energy. He now may have done the same to U.S. executive compensation with shareholder approval of his new incentive compensation arrangement at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting on March 21st. The new incentive compensation arrangement is essentially 12 tranches of performance stock options, each vesting when Tesla’s market-capitalization value grows in $50 billion increments starting from $100 billion for the first option tranche and ending at $650 billion over 10 years.

Investors’ evolving view of their role as fiduciaries is changing their view on engagement with their portfolio companies, governance best practices, and expectations for how companies conduct their shareholder outreach efforts. This blog post is the first of a three-part series discussing these issues, and focuses on institutional investors’ and proxy advisory firms’ view of investor/company engagement. Part two of the series will focus on investors’ hot topics related to governance issues and compensation best practices, while part three will focus on considerations for companies engaging in shareholder outreach efforts.

While the performance-based compensation exception to the $1 million compensation limit under Internal Revenue Code Section 162(m) for “covered employees” is a thing of the past (absent grandfathered contracts) for federal income tax purposes, practitioners are realizing that Section 162(m) may continue to be a consideration for state taxes.

On January 12th, ISS Analytics published an interview with ISS’ Head of U.S. Compensation Research intended to provide insight into how ISS will assess changes in compensation practices as a result of the recent legislative modifications to IRC Section 162(m). ISS states it will be closely monitoring the issue, although they did not specify any particular policy changes (yet).

This blog discusses two issues raised by the tax rate changes in the recently enacted tax bill: (1) how the new corporate tax rate applies to fiscal year (i.e., non-calendar year) corporations and (2) the new individual tax withholding rates on supplemental income. The first topic is particularly important since it turns out the actual rule is different from what many of us expected the rule to be.

The exploration and production (E&P) industry is in the midst of a sea-change in investor expectations. Investors have indicated that they are no longer supportive of unprofitable growth, rather they are shifting their focus to financial/investor returns and disciplined capital allocation. Companies should assess whether their executive incentive plans are evolving to support changes in business strategy and investor expectations.

With tax reform now approved and expected to be signed into law prior to December 31, companies are evaluating year-end strategies for 2017 bonuses in light of the reduction in the corporate tax rate beginning next year and changes to the deductibility of compensation provided to certain executive officers. The tax bill and its implications are complex, and the appropriate course of action varies from company to company based on numerous circumstances related to existing policy, governance considerations and the predictability of payouts expected to occur in 2018 that are potentially deductible with respect to the 2017 tax year.

We recently presented an executive compensation program review to the board compensation committee of a successful, long-standing S&P 500 industrial company. The peer group had 20-or-so comparable companies. A primary conclusion was that after six years of say-on-pay and proxy advisor voting rules, both the pay levels and program structures in the peer group were never more alike.

As readers know, comprehensive tax reform legislation was introduced on November 2, 2017, and is currently working through Congress. The House version was passed on November 16th and the Senate version was passed on December 2nd. Both versions generally align on most executive compensation-related provisions, but the shape of any final legislation remains uncertain as the House and Senate will attempt to reconcile their differences over the next few weeks.

2017 marks the seventh year for “Say-on-Pay” voting. Consistent with prior years, an overwhelming percentage of Russell 3000 companies have obtained majority Say-on-Pay support to date and ISS issued an "Against" vote recommendation on approximately 12% of Say-on-Pay proposals.

Today, ISS published preliminary U.S. compensation FAQs, which provide insight to the updated ISS quantitative pay-for-performance screening methodology and its U.S. Equity Plan Scorecard (EPSC) evaluation related to stock plan proposals, each as applicable to public companies with annual shareholder meetings on or after February 1, 2018.

On November 16, ISS released policy updates applicable to public companies with annual shareholder meetings on or after February 1, 2018. The compensation-related policy updates impact say-on-pay proposals in the U.S. and Canada and the re-election of board members in the U.S. In addition, ISS adopted a new U.S. policy regarding shareholder proposals seeking gender pay gap information. Finally, the policy updates do not address the use of “realizable pay” or the CEO pay ratio to evaluate pay-for-performance alignment or excessive compensation practices in 2018.

Last night, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hatch released the first amendments to the Senate’s version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  Amendments related to executive compensation largely mirror changes that were made to the House version of the bill last week.  An important change was the deletion of new rules that would have taxed non-qualified deferred compensation (including non-qualified stock options) upon vesting.  This means non-qualified stock options will continue to be taxed upon exercise and Section 409A lives on to govern deferred compensation.

Yesterday evening, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hatch released details of the Senate’s version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The most notable development for executive compensation is that the Senate bill generally contains the same executive compensation related provisions that were included in the first, and now outdated, release of the House bill (H.R. 1).

Today, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Brady released an amendment that impacts several provisions of H.R. 1. Most notably for executive compensation, the amendment strikes Section 3801 of H.R. 1 (which introduced a new “Section 409B”), thereby preserving the current-law tax treatment of nonqualified deferred compensation.

On November 2, 2017, the House Ways and Means Committee released the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (H.R. 1). The bill designates several executive compensation items for amendment or repeal. If enacted as proposed, H.R. 1 would result in sweeping changes in the design and taxation of executive compensation including: elimination of non-qualified deferred compensation arrangements, elimination of non-qualified stock options as a long-term incentive vehicle, and elimination of deduction for performance-based compensation under I.R.C. §162(m).

On October 27, 2017, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) commenced a two-week consultation period on potential updates to its benchmark voting policy for 2018. There are a total of 13 U.S. and international draft policy updates for consideration, of which two relate to U.S. compensation matters: non-employee director (NED) pay and gender pay gap proposals.

On September 21, the SEC released several documents interpreting the pay ratio disclosure rules required under Dodd-Frank.  In addition to implicitly confirming the widespread perception that the SEC plans to take no steps to modify the final regulations or delay implementation of the rule, the guidance provided some liberalization with respect to the procedures companies could use to compute the pay ratio and to make compliance less onerous.  Notably, the SEC reversed its controversial position that, at least in some circumstances, independent contractors and leased workers had to be counted in computing the pay ratio.

FW Cook recently released the 5th edition of its report on aggregate share-based compensation practices, which covers company-wide equity grant levels and practices at 300 U.S. based companies for the period 2014 – 2016.

In its 45th year of publication, FW Cook's annual Top 250 Report details the long-term incentive practices and trends of the 250 largest companies by market cap value in the Standard & Poors ("S&P") 500. The survey is intended to provide information to assist boards of directors and compensation professionals in designing and implementing effective long-term incentive programs that promote long-term success for their companies.

Among Russell 3000 companies, there were a total of 412 proposals seeking shareholder approval of equity plan amendments and 191 proposals requesting shareholder approval of new equity plans. With the exception of three proposals, all received majority shareholder support.

On July 20th, the SEC released its rulemaking agenda, and the list is much shorter than it was last year at this time. The list purports to reflect the rulemaking initiatives for the coming year, and several remaining Dodd-Frank executive compensation items are not on the agenda.

ISS recently launched two surveys - the Governance Principles Survey and the Policy Application Survey - soliciting market feedback for its 2018 policy updates. ISS is seeking feedback on several issues, including one related to the “Pay Ratio Between Senior Executives and Employees” and another related to “Non-Employee Director Pay.” The surveys will be open until August 31st and October 6th, respectively.

While an ISS recommendation is not per se determinative of the final Say-on-Pay vote result, a “For” recommendation significantly increases the likelihood of securing a positive outcome, and an “Against” vote recommendation typically requires companies to engage in substantial investor outreach.

2017 marks the seventh year for “Say-on-Pay” voting. Consistent with prior years, an overwhelming percentage of Russell 3000 companies have obtained majority Say-on-Pay support to date and ISS issued an "Against" vote recommendation on approximately 11% of Say-on-Pay proposals.