November 12, 2019

NACD Directorship – Broader Stakeholder Concerns Drive Board Engagement

Seven Lessons From Engaged Investors is the title of a recent study by Farient Advisors and its partners in the Global Governance and Executive Compensation Group, a collective of independent advisory firms that represent clients in more than 30 countries. Based on in-depth interviews with 25 of the largest investors around the world, the study finds that these investors place great importance on engagement with boards related to both shareholder and stakeholder issues—especially environmental, social, and governance (ESG).

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November 12, 2019

Bloomberg – CBS Chief Will Get $100 Million Severance and Still Keep His Job

CBS Corp. acting Chief Executive Officer Joe Ianniello is in line for a hefty haul when Viacom Inc. completes its proposed merger with the broadcast network. While he won’t get to lead the combined entity, he’ll collect $100 million severance and remain chief of CBS with a new contract entitling him to tens of millions of dollars more.

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October 25, 2019

CNN Business – Why CEOs are paid so much

There is no shortage of headlines about CEOs getting paid seriously big money. Last week, for instance, it was revealed that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella got a 66% raise, bringing his total compensation to nearly $43 million. And this summer Abigail Disney, an heir to the Disney fortune, publicly criticized CEO Bob Iger’s $66 million pay package, which is more than 1,000 times the median pay of Disney employees. While many CEOs are not as generously compensated as Nadella and Iger, they do pretty well. In 2018, the median total compensation for S&P 500 CEOs rose 4% to $12.3 million, according to the latest figures from the Conference Board. CEOs at the high end of that group were paid more than $22 million, while those at the low end were paid roughly $6 million.

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October 25, 2019

The Wall Street Journal – WeWork Employee Options Underwater as Ex-CEO Reaps

Adam Neumann stands to receive up to $1.7 billion as part of a deal with SoftBank Group Corp. to step away from office-space startup WeWork. The company’s employees aren’t doing so well.

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October 25, 2019

CNN Business – A surprising number of companies don’t have a CEO succession plan. Here’s why.

Whether they quit, retire, get fired or die, all CEOs eventually leave. The billion-dollar question is: Who should replace them? The boards of 20% of public companies and 32% of private ones can’t answer that question. That’s because they haven’t discussed long-term succession planning in the past 12 months, according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Corporate Directors.

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