Tuesday, 24 January 2012

BIS proposals on exec pay - UPDATED

Should be revealed this afternoon apparently. Will blog when available....

The BIS summary of responses to the consultation is here. Still no sign of the actual proposals tho, so here' are my brief notes from yesterday's session in Parliament

Transparency

Secondary legislation later this year to split rem reports into two – a forward looking bit and a bit on implementation

The forward-looking bit will require an explanation of metrics used, any comparison with employee earnings used and how views of employees are taken into account (suggests info and consult regs could be used for this).

The backward-looking bit will require a simple single-figure disclosure for each director, how rewards relate to performance and set out the distribution of pay vs divi v reinvestment etc

NB – no requirement to publish pay ratios.

Shareholder powers

There will be further consultation on shareholder powers, but looking at a binding vote on future pay policy, also a binding vote on notice periods greater than a year.

Will also look at whether a higher threshold – ie 75% - should be introduced.

Other bits

Wants to see greater diversity on rem comms, but not going for employee reps. Will look at exec directors sitting on rem comms.

Wants greater transparency on pay consultants and their fees.

Corp Gov Code to say that all companies (might be FTSE350???) should introduce clawback.

No comments: