Committee Pay Mostly Stagnant from 2007 to 2009

Nov. 17, 2010 - PRLog -- Redwood City, Calif. - Equilar, the market leader in executive compensation data and research, has published a report on board and committee chair and member trends in the S&P 1500. The report found that the median board member pay in the S&P 1500 for 2009 was $142,500. It also found that from 2007 to 2009, most committee chairs and members saw stagnant pay or moderate pay increases.

The report is based on FY 2007-2009 proxy filings of members of the S&P 1500, and examines audit, compensation, and governance committees. A few of Equilar’s findings:

•   Median board member pay for the S&P 1500 was $142,500. This figure only includes board-related, not committee-related, pay. S&P 500 members had a median pay of $190,000, while members of the other two S&P groups were slightly below the median for the entire cohort.

•   Audit committee chairs and members still get paid the most, but their pay has tended to be stagnant or declining from 2007 to 2009. Compensation committee chairs have seen a pay jump in that period, perhaps thanks to the increased attention to their work. Compensation and governance committee members saw mostly stagnant pay figures as well.

•   Governance committee members are the most tenured in all three groups, followed by compensation and audit committee members.

•   Audit committees meet the most, followed by compensation and governance committees.

•   The prevalence of meeting fees for both chairs and members fell in all three S&P groups, while the prevalence of annual retainers rose. (One notable exception: governance committees in the S&P 400 saw the opposite effect.)

•   In 2009, the most prevalent pay structure for chairs was annual retainer and meeting fees, while the second most common structure was annual retainer only. The most prevalent pay structure for members was meeting fees only, with over 60 percent prevalence over all committees.

The complete report is provided to all Equilar Knowledge Network subscribers. Non-subscribers can request a copy of the report by visiting
http://www.equilar.com/knowledge-network/research-reports...

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About Equilar, Inc. (http://www.equilar.com)
Equilar's award-winning product suite is the gold standard for benchmarking and tracking executive compensation, board compensation, equity grants and award policies and compensation practices. Equilar products and custom research services enable corporations, human capital consulting firms, law firms, investors, individual executives, and the media to accurately compare pay packages across thousands of public companies using SEC and exclusive survey data. Equilar research is cited frequently by Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, Reuters, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other leading media outlets. Equilar (Redwood City, CA) was recognized recently as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America by Deloitte, Inc., and the Silicon Valley Business Journal.