Glass Lewis is excited to announce the release of our annual review of the link between executive compensation and sustainability!
Executive compensation continues to be the most controversial issue facing companies, as many investors have scrutinized pay programs and pushed for executives’ pay to be aligned with long-term performance. At the same time, a discussion regarding the importance of sustainability issues and practices has arisen. These two hot topics – executive compensation and sustainability – are actually converging into one conversation. Glass Lewis’ Greening the Green provides the data, analysis and context for investors to further examine this area.
For the 2013 edition of Greening the Green: Linking Executive Compensation to Sustainability, Glass Lewis reviewed the short- and long-term compensation plans disclosed by companies in their annual proxy filings. For this years report, we reviewed the constituents of indices in 11 global markets (S&P 100, S&P/TSX 60, FTSE 100, S&P/ASX 50, IBrX 50, IBEX 35, CAC 40, AEX 25, OBX 25, SMI 20 and DAX 30). Given the significant growth in companies linking compensation to sustainability since our first report in 2010, Glass Lewis has adjusted accordingly and, after deliberation, removed employee engagement from our definition of sustainability for the purposes of this review. Given that this was a popular way for companies to link compensation to sustainability, it had a significant effect on the findings of our report. We found that found that, when including employee engagement in our definition of sustainability, more than 44% of all companies reviewed provided a link between compensation and sustainability, up from 42% in 2012. However, when this metric was excluded, in both 2012 and 2013, the proportion of companies that provided such a link remained identical, at 39%.
Greening the Green discusses the strength and types of the reported links between compensation and sustainability as well as potential reasons for the increase in the prevalence of companies employing links. In addition to our global analysis, we also take an in-depth look at companies the United States, reviewing say on pay vote results, EPA fines as well as the level of board oversight afforded to sustainability issues. We also provide specific examples of companies in various markets that link compensation to sustainability through several case studies.
For more information regarding this report, send us an email. To purchase a copy, please contact Glass Lewis at info@glasslewis.com or submit a request through www.glasslewis.com.