Saturday, February 16, 2013

Switzerland May Severely Limit Executive Pay

Bloomberg.com reports on an initiative in Switzerland addressing high executive compensation (LINK):

Swiss company chief executive officers, including Roche Holding AG’s Severin Schwan and Nestle SA’s Paul Bulcke, earn some of the world’s highest salaries. That may soon change.
With more than 100,000 Swiss citizens having signed a petition to limit “fat-cat” pay, voters will decide at a March 3 referendum whether top executives should have their compensation set by shareholders. While a poll shows a majority may vote yes, the industry’s lobby group warns that it will drive out tax-paying companies and is campaigning for a softer counter proposal.
Naturally they oppose this.  What they also fear is that this will pass, Switzerland will continue to prosper, and this idea will spread.

Common shareholders have been ignored by boards for too many decades.  Too many CEOs get too many unfair deals and get rewarded too well for failure.

Let's see what happens with this initiative.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, there's something very broken in corporate governance, that's for sure. Too much cronyism and incestuous relationships that lead to absurd compensation for top management that it totally disconnected from the health of the company. And shareholders who have been essentially powerless to really do anything to fix it.

    I honestly don't know what the best answer is. But it clearly should be something that doesn't involve the govt dictating terms of compensation, etc.

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