Corporate cut & paste: US style

As most people will be aware, the SEC is currently consulting on a rule that would require US corporations to disclose internal pay ratios. (This is something that the UK government thought was not worth pursuing remember.)

As you might expect, the US business lobby are no fans of this rule. And, just like I found in responses to UK consultations on exec pay and other issues, companies are sticking generic responses in to the SEC consultation. Hat-tip to Change to Win Investment Group, who spotted this last week. Compare this response to the SEC and this one.

I thought I'd see if I could find a source, so took a slice of text out of one of the responses and searched around for similar docs. It turns out that the National Investor Relations Institute produced a template letter, here.

US lobbyists seem less ashamed of this though, as the template is freely available on the NIRI site. In contrast, companies have sought to 'personalise' their responses.

Powering down

Blogging will be light to non-existent for a while now, but I shall keep things ticking over...

Oracle defeated, again

There we go, Oracle lost its 'say on pay' vote for the second year running. And remember that Larry Ellison holds a quarter of the company's stock, so it requires a serious level of investor opposition to tip into a majority defeat. Another win for US shareholder activists, and CTW in particular.

CtW Investment Group, an arm of labor federation Change to Win, had urged Oracle shareholders to vote against three members of Oracle’s compensation committee for awarding Chief Executive Larry Ellison excessive pay and the board’s failures to respond to longstanding compensation concerns. Ellison received compensation valued at $76.9 million in the fiscal year that ended in May. Oracle’s stock rose nearly 28% in those 12 months.
After the vote totals were announced, Michael Pryce-Jones, an official from CtW, asked the board whether Bruce Chizen, the head of Oracle’s compensation committee, should step down in light of the consecutive “say on pay” defeats.