THE NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF CONFLICTS
OF INTERESTS WITHIN THE COMPENSATION
COMMITTEES OF THE BOARDS OF 2,000 LARGE
AMERICAN PUBLIC COMPANIES.
Deciding on Executive Pay: Lack of Independence Is SeenBy DIANA B. HENRIQUES and GERALDINE
FABRIKANT
December 18, 2002
When
America's biggest companies decide how much to pay their top executives, most
of them leave the decision to a group of their board members known as the
compensation committee. In theory, members of this committee are independent
enough of the company's executives to deny them raises or force them to take
pay cuts when the company is faring poorly. In
practice, it can be a very different story. An examination of almost 2,000
corporations finds that at hundreds of them, members of the compensation
committee work for or do business with the company or its chief executive. In
some cases, they even belong to the executive's family. Legislation
enacted this summer after a wave of costly corporate scandals is silent about
the makeup of the compensation committee, although the new law set high
standards of independence for another important boardroom committee, the
audit committee, which oversees a company's financial controls and the
auditing of its books. Yet
compensation committees are "definitely more clubby" than they
should be, said Roger W. Raber, chief executive of the National Association
of Corporate Directors, which thinks that only board Deciding
on Executive Pay: Lack of Independence Is Seen These
cases and others cited here are based on an analysis by The New York Times of
a database compiled by the Corporate Library, an investor information service;
on the most recently available corporate proxy statements, in most cases
those filed this year for the 2001 fiscal year; and on interviews with
compensation experts and securities lawyers. The database defines directors
as independent unless they have family, business or professional ties to the
company or are owners or beneficiaries of some other entity that profits
directly from the company's activities, like a law firm or major supplier. A
Decade of Warnings Even
Definitions Are Up for Grabs Compensation
committees are made up of company directors, but they may work with an
outside consultant or the company's own personnel executives. Typically,
their job is to evaluate the performance of senior management and decide on
the top executives' pay. "Historically, it has been extremely rare that
a board would ever countermand, or even question, what the compensation
committee decided to do," said Paul R. Dorf, managing director of
Compensation Resources, a consulting firm. Experts
concede that even committees with minor or nonexistent conflicts of interest
can approve outsize pay for lackluster or even poor performance. John W.
Snow, chosen by President Bush last week as Treasury secretary, was paid more
than $50 million in his nearly 12 years as chairman of the railroad company
CSX even as profits fell and its stock lagged the market."But it's one
thing to say the C.E.O. is overpaid; it's a step further to say, `and his
business partner is on the compensation committee,' " said Nell Minow,
editor of the Corporate Library site. Since
at least the early 1990's, oversight groups like the National Association of
Corporate Directors have called for fully independent compensation
committees. "Achieving both the appearance and the reality of
independence demands no less," the directors' group said in a 1992
report. In the
wake of recent scandals, both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq
market have proposals before the Securities and Exchange Commission that
would require independent compensation committees as part of their listing
standards. "But those are far from a done deal," said Holly J.
Gregory, a corporate lawyer at the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
Both proposals are subject to S.E.C. review and public comment, she said. Moreover,
the two proposals define independence differently, allowing some business
ties so long as boards determine that they are not material. The proposals
also exempt companies with a controlling shareholder, and would not go into
effect for several years. Right now,
about all that market regulators require of compensation committees is that
they explain their decisions in the annual proxy statement. But many of those
reports, several securities lawyers said, are little more than boilerplate
detailing a rationale that can be mystifying or contradictory. Paul
Hodgson, a senior research associate at the Corporate Library, pointed to the
Carnival Corporation, the cruise ship operator. At Carnival, a compensation
committee with three members - only one of whom has no ties to the company -
approved a $40.5 million total pay package, including stock options, for the
chief executive, Micky Arison, in 2001. The committee's proxy report notes
that Mr. Arison himself actually recommends the size of his bonus and that
there is "no specific relationship" between that bonus and company
performance.Tim Gallagher, a Carnival spokesman, said Mr. Arison's
compensation was determined by a variety of factors, including the company's
performance, its strategic position and its success in weathering the slump
in leisure travel after Sept. 11. One
reason that cases like these persist is that mutual funds and other
institutional investors have not used their power to demand strong,
conflict-free compensation committees, said Bruce R. Ellig, the author of
"The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation" ( McGraw-Hill,
2001). Institutional investors have to step up, Mr. Ellig added. "It's
not the small shareholder who can stand up and say, `Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,
but I think you're overpaid.' " Some
Case Studies Questionable
Ties at 200 Companies More
than 200 large corporations - including some of the nation's best-known and
most widely admired companies - have had compensation committees with members
who have disclosed ties to the company or its chief executive. members with
no personal or business ties to the company should serve on its compensation
committee. "They just don't have the rigor of oversight that we see with
other committees, especially audit committees." Mr. Raber
added: "That, to me, is going to be the continuing crisis: looking at
some of the pay practices, especially the severance packages. We have another
storm to go through, and frankly, it's going to be ugly."The study by
The New York Times of almost 2,000 of the largest American corporations,
measured by their stock market value, shows that 420 of them, more than 20
percent, had compensation committees in 2001 with members who had business
ties or other relationships with the chief executive or the company that
could compromise their independence. Dozens of those members were company
executives. At
more than 70 companies, even the chairman of the compensation committee had
such ties, and in nine cases the chairman was actually an executive of the
company. These
are just the connections that have been fully disclosed to investors. That
such ties are not always disclosed was illustrated yesterday, when Frank E.
Walsh Jr., a former member of the compensation committee at Tyco
International, pleaded guilty to charges of failing to report that Tyco had
paid him a $20 million fee for his role in a company deal. Potential
conflicts of interest cropped up at some of the nation's best-known
companies. For
example, at Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio chain,
only one of the five people on its compensation committee is free of
potential conflicts. The committee has retained - indeed, sweetened - pay
packages that guaranteed raises for the chairman, L. Lowry Mays, and his two
sons, regardless of company performance. The sons have severance agreements
that entitle them to 14 years of salary, bonuses, benefits and stock options
if they quit because the board fails to choose one of them to succeed their
father as chief executive. Clear Channel said the committee met existing
federal guidelines for independence. At the
Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which owns the Waldbaum's, Food
Emporium and A.& P. supermarket chains, only one of the three people on
the compensation committee is independent. A second is the family lawyer for
the 38-year-old chief executive, Christian W. E. Haub, and a third works for
Mr. Haub's parents, the company's controlling shareholders. The committee has
regularly approved raises and larger bonuses for Mr. Haub, despite the
company's worsening business problems. The company said it was considering
revising the committee's composition, but said the pay was appropriate. And
three of the eight people who set the final pay package for John F. Welch Jr.
when he was chief executive of General Electric have done business, through
their own companies, with G.E. Their decision, which at first looked like a
pay cut for Mr. Welch, actually gave him a 50 percent raise for the year.
That raise substantially improved Mr. Welch's pension after he retired in
early September 2001. The company declined to comment on the arrangement,
although it has subsequently taken steps to increase the independence of its
board. A
Decade of Warnings Even
Definitions Are Up for Grabs Compensation
committees are made up of company directors, but they may work with an
outside consultant or the company's own personnel executives. Typically,
their job is to evaluate the performance of senior management and decide on
the top executives' pay. "Historically, it has been extremely rare that
a board would ever countermand, or even question, what the compensation
committee decided to do," said Paul R. Dorf, managing director of
Compensation Resources, a consulting firm. Experts
concede that even committees with minor or nonexistent conflicts of interest
can approve outsize pay for lackluster or even poor performance. John W.
Snow, chosen by President Bush last week as Treasury secretary, was paid more
than $50 million in his nearly 12 years as chairman of the railroad company
CSX even as profits fell and its stock lagged the market. "But it's one
thing to say the C.E.O. is overpaid; it's a step further to say, `and his
business partner is on the compensation committee,' " said Nell Minow,
editor of the Corporate Library site. Since
at least the early 1990's, oversight groups like the National Association of
Corporate Directors have called for fully independent compensation
committees. "Achieving both the appearance and the reality of
independence demands no less," the directors' group said in a 1992
report. In the
wake of recent scandals, both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq
market have proposals before the Securities and Exchange Commission that
would require independent compensation committees as part of their listing
standards. "But those are far from a done deal," said Holly J.
Gregory, a corporate lawyer at the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
Both proposals are subject to S.E.C. review and public comment, she said. Moreover,
the two proposals define independence differently, allowing some business
ties so long as boards determine that they are not material. The proposals
also exempt companies with a controlling shareholder, and would not go into
effect for several years. Right
now, about all that market regulators require of compensation committees is
that they explain their decisions in the annual proxy statement. But many of
those reports, several securities lawyers said, are little more than
boilerplate detailing a rationale that can be mystifying or contradictory.
Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate at the Corporate Library, pointed
to the Carnival Corporation, the cruise ship operator. At Carnival, a
compensation committee with three members - only one of whom has no ties to
the company - approved a $40.5 million total pay package, including stock
options, for the chief executive, Micky Arison, in 2001. The committee's
proxy report notes that Mr. Arison himself actually recommends the size of
his bonus and that there is "no specific relationship" between that
bonus and company performance. Tim Gallagher, a Carnival spokesman, said Mr.
Arison's compensation was determined by a variety of factors, including the
company's performance, its strategic position and its success in weathering
the slump in leisure travel after Sept. 11. One
reason that cases like these persist is that mutual funds and other
institutional investors have not used their power to demand strong, conflict-free
compensation committees, said Bruce R. Ellig, the author of "The
Complete Guide to Executive Compensation" ( McGraw-Hill, 2001).
Institutional investors have to step up, Mr. Ellig added. "It's not the
small shareholder who can stand up and say, `Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, but I
think you're overpaid.' " When
General Electric's compensation committee negotiated Mr. Welch's final
preretirement pay package, its members included three men whose companies
have done business with General Electric: Sam Nunn, the former senator and a
partner in the law firm of King & Spalding, which has worked for the
company; Roger Penske, who has an indirect stake in a trucking partnership
engaged in a joint venture with the company; and Kenneth Langone, chief executive
and controlling shareholder of Invemed Associates, which also has done
business with the company. General
Electric's proxy statement for 2001 suggests that Mr. Welch had been given a
pay cut: $16.1 million in salary and bonus, down from $16.7 million a year
earlier. But in
fact the figure in the proxy represents just eight months of service by Mr.
Welch, who retired in early September 2001. His annual rate of pay,
therefore, was about $24 million - a 50 percent increase for the year. Over
the previous five years, when the company's performance was much stronger,
his annual raises never exceeded 33 percent. Few
would have considered 2001 a banner year for Mr. Welch. The company's stock
fell sharply after the embarrassing collapse of its bid for Honeywell during
the summer. But a
raise in 2001 was particularly beneficial to Mr. Welch because it increased
his monthly pay, a crucial factor in determining the size of his pension,
according to Graef Crystal, a compensation consultant. Specifically, his
annual pension was based on how much he made in his top-earning 36 months of
service over the previous 10 years. Without the 2001 raise, his annual
pension would have been about $7.5 million, rather than the $9 million he
received, Mr. Crystal said. Earlier
this year, General Electric made changes to its board to increase its
independence and changed the makeup of its compensation committee. Clear
Channel, based in San Antonio, is the nation's largest radio station chain
and a major provider of live entertainment. The company was a co-producer of
the Broadway hit "The Producers" and handled national tours for
stars like Madonna and the Backstreet Boys. It owns television stations and
billboard companies, and manages major sports figures, including Michael
Jordan and Andre Agassi. But since 1990, the company has been dogged by
antitrust investigations and complaints from the music industry that its
radio stations will not play music by artists who are not represented by the
company's promotion unit. But
those uncertainties are not reflected in the company's pay policies,
compensation experts say. Mr. Mays, the 66-year-old co-founder and chief
executive, has two sons working at the company - and all three men are
guaranteed raises and stock option grants each year, in addition to the
unusual 14-year severance plan set up for the sons. This
arrangement was approved by a previous committee. But having inherited the
agreement, "the new committee has not backed off; on the contrary, they
have compounded the problem rather than addressing it," said Brian
Foley, an independent compensation consultant. For example, he said, the
committee has given the sons additional payments that added millions to the
value of their severance packages. Clear
Channel said the compensation deals were set up to ensure continuity of
management and stability of leadership. Clear Channel's five-member
compensation committee includes only one outsider with no company ties: John
H. Williams, a retired senior vice president of First Union Securities. The
other members include Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and Alan D. Feld, whose Washington
law firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, has collected legal fees
from the company. Another member is B. J. McCombs, who was a co-founder of
the company with Mr. Mays and whose children's trust funds, along with trusts
for Mr. Mays's children, lease office space to Clear Channel. A
fourth member, Thomas O. Hicks, a partner in the investment firm Hicks, Muse,
Tate & Furst, also has ties to the company. Pan American Sports Network,
an affiliate of Hicks, Muse, purchased the television rights for the United
States Open tennis tournament from a company later acquired by Clear Channel.
When Pan American filed for bankruptcy protection in March, Clear Channel was
left on the hook for payments that Pan American owed under the agreement. And
until August 2001, when he gave up his committee seat, the sixth member of
Clear Channel's compensation committee was Lowry Mays himself. A
company spokeswoman said the board's lawyers had determined that Mr. Jordan
and Mr. Feld qualified as independent under the new federal guidelines. Other
committee assignments will be reviewed as new rules are adopted, she said.
The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company's business has been in turmoil for
years. In recent years, the company has closed stores, laid off workers and
eliminated its stock dividend. Last spring, it found it had been using
unacceptable accounting for years and revised three previous years' results. And in
October, its president and chief operating officer, Elizabeth R. Culligan,
left after less than a year in the job, dismaying Wall Street about the
company's leadership. "We are concerned about management's ability to
budget and execute on its business plan," complained Mark Husson, an
industry analyst at Merrill Lynch. Nevertheless,
in 2001, Mr. Haub, the chief executive, received a cash salary and bonus
totaling just under $1.2 million, a 53 percent raise over
the previous year. "I
really did have to stop and wonder how he got paid a bonus for 2001,"
said Judith Fischer, managing director of Executive Compensation Advisory
Services in Alexandria, Va. "It's very questionable."Richard P. De
Santa, vice president for corporate affairs at A.& P., said the pay
package reflected A.& P.'s return to profitability in 2001.Mr. Haub is
the son of the controlling shareholders, and his mother, Helga, is a board
member. The chairman of the compensation committee, John D. Barline, is a
legal adviser to the Haub family. A second member, Rosemarie Baumeister, is
an employee of the Haub family's interests in Germany, which do business with
A.& P. Mr. De
Santa said the board was considering changing the makeup of the committee, as
part of a continuing effort to make the board more independent. Many
companies - like General Electric and Clear Channel - have provided
outstanding returns to shareholders over the years despite potential
conflicts on their compensation committees. And, while many directors with
company ties would not comment publicly, several noted that those ties were
fully disclosed, had been blessed by company lawyers and were too
insignificant to affect their judgment. But
although individual directors may feel they can serve faithfully despite such
ties, a compensation committee with conflicts is often a signal that the
board is not strong or independent enough, said Ms. Minow of the Corporate
Library. "Particularly in this era when the investor community is very
skeptical of boards of directors, it is really important that the boards be
above suspicion." Possible
Remedies An
Uphill Battle for Challengers Shareholders
who try to challenge their chief executive's pay package in court or in the
boardroom face an uphill fight, lawyers and shareholder activists say. For
one thing, it is hard to see problems coming, said Ed Durkin, director of
corporate affairs for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, whose pension
funds have been demanding independent compensation committees at a number of
companies for the last five years. "The
committee reports have no predictive value at all; some of it is not in the
English language," Mr. Durkin said. As a result, he said, only experts
can usually decipher the practical effect of various compensation policies on
the chief executive or the shareholders. And
compensation committees are not required to disclose which experts they
consulted to develop the chief executive's package. That makes it difficult
to determine what other business ties, if any, the consultants have with the
corporation or the chief executive, several securities lawyers noted. Compensation
committees rarely hire a consultant not recommended by the chief executive,
said Mr. Raber of the directors' group. "A lot of rubber-stamping goes
on," he said. The
new listing standards proposed by the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq
would require independent compensation committees, although each proposal has
limiting features. Companies with a large controlling stockholder, like
A.& P., would be exempt under both plans, and the Nasdaq proposal permits
one nonindependent committee member to serve for up to two years under
"exceptional and limited circumstances." The
two plans define director independence a bit differently, lawyers noted, and
it is not yet clear that they would ban some business ties that shareholders
may find troubling. Some
companies that disclosed potential conflicts on their compensation committees
in their most recent proxy statements have taken steps to increase their
committees' independence. But business ties among outside directors serving
on the committees remain fairly common, said Mr. Dorf, the compensation
consultant. The New York Exchange and Nasdaq proposals "have yet to have
an impact," he added. In the
past, litigation has not been a useful weapon for battling excessive
executive pay, according to Michael Perino, visiting law professor at
Columbia. The courts - most significantly those in Delaware, where most large
corporations are registered - have generally treated executive pay as a
matter best left to the business judgment of the board, Professor Perino
explained. But some experts think that may be changing under the weight of
the current scandals. "We're in a totally new environment now,"
said Amy Goodman, a corporate law expert at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in
Washington. "You can't divorce executive compensation from what has
happened as a result of all the scandals of the past year." |
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