Latest Insights & Industry Trends

We would like to share this article by the Washington Post with our readers, along with insight on the subject of salary shaming from one of NFPCC's founders. Here are 4 “predictions” from our company's President, Chris Crawford, related to CEO Pay and this article: CEO...

Dear All, We are well into the start of the new year and although 2018 has greeted us with some extremely cold temperatures that paralyzed our city for a couple of days, we at NFPCC have hit the ground running and are gearing up for proxy season. In this first L-Blast of 2018...

We would like to share this article written by Dina Gerdeman featured on Harvard Business School's website entitled, "If the CEO’s High Salary Isn't Justified to Employees, Firm Performance May Suffer." Researcher Ethan Rouen discovers that rank-and-file employees understand...

As we all know, both the House of Representatives and Senate voted to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act legislation and sent it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the President’s signature. While it will take more time for the country’s citizens and corporate world alike to truly...

December – a time for reflection on the year that was, review of company performance…and a first look at the latest policy updates from proxy advisory firms like Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (“ISS”) and Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC (“Glass Lewis”). While it...

This is your last chance to participate in NFPCC’s Energy Pay Pulse Survey. It closes Friday, December 15th! At NFPCC, we’ve designed our participant-only 2018 Energy Pay Pulse Survey to concisely and powerfully assess market trends for companies in the energy industry. The...

Dear All, This holiday season we at Longecker & Associates are reminded of how truly blessed we are to watch those we advise make a difference in their companies, community and many more areas. In the spirit of advising, we have some great articles to share with you all...

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity”. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Executive compensation practice and application is continually developing based on proxy advisory firm...

Dear All, It’s hard to believe the holidays are upon us, but what an exciting time it is for our great city of Houston as the Astros compete for their first World Series title! We may be champions by the time this hits your inbox, but whether we win or not, we are proud of...

There was an article titled “Decoding CEO Pay” recently published in Harvard Business Review, and in our opinion here at NFP Compensation Consulting, Messrs. Pozen and Kothari have some valid points, and many that are not so valid. It appears they found a few unique, obscure...

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) launched a two-week consultation on potential updates to its benchmark voting policy for 2018. The comment period will allow all interested parties – including companies, investors, advisors, and others – to provide their perspective...

ISS published its annual post-season report on compensation results and trends last month, and this article from Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation summarizes their findings. Here are some main points: Say-on-pay support reached its...

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but to serve others at whatever cost.” - ARTHUR ASHE Dear All, That quote holds true even weeks after the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Harvey and reminds us...

We found this great article written by Business Wire, and we wanted to share it with our readers: Activist Investor Challenges Executive Pay Accounting at T-Mobile July 31, 2017 - WASHINGTON - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Earlier today, the CtW Investment Group petitioned the SEC to...

Just last month, NFPCC’s “CEO Pay Ratio - Winter is Coming” article summed up the latest on the controversial pay ratio rule. This month, we dive into a related subject by taking a peek back in time to the mid-1970s. This past week, a 1977 Wall Street Journal article was...

NFP Compensation Consulting performed a detailed study of compensation awarded to chief executives at North Texas' largest publicly traded companies, based on 2016 revenue. This article written by Karen Robinson-Jacobs discuss the main trends found in our study and features...

“Winter is coming” – a household phrase for those familiar with the Game of Thrones television series and book adaptation. Applied in the context of corporate issuers – CEO Pay Ratio is coming! Are you prepared? Are you familiar with how to run the calculation? Do you...

Chain Restaurant Total Rewards Association's 2017 Annual Conference  Hilton Gaslamp 401 K St. San Diego, CA 92101 Session 1: Roundtable: What Reward Data is Important to You? July 26, 2017 3:00pm Speakers: Liz Mayo, Director, NFP Compensation Consulting and Susan Douglas,...

Federal legislation impacts all citizens. This is especially the case for rewards professionals, as they must navigate and implement rewards programs that are subject to new legislation once it becomes law. Last spring, when WorldatWork held its first Legislative Summit in...

Our survey team at NFPCC has designed an incentive compensation survey for the Oil & Gas industry to provide competitive market practices in both annual and long-term incentive compensation plan designs. Specifically, the survey will report on incentive plan eligibility,...

While CEO pay has been a hot topic for many years, it has come back into the spotlight after the House of Representatives recently voted to repeal the Dodd-Frank legislation. Critics are complaining that transparency is necessary to lower CEO pay, but we are sharing this Fortune...

NFP Compensation Consulting' President, Chris Crawford, was quoted in this recent article from the Houston Business Journal discussing why it "pays" to live in Houston. Written by Jack Witthaus, the article highlights various roles and expert rationale on why they either earn...

There's a new revenue recognition standard that could affect compensation and bonus plans. These plans are made over many years, and the ways of measuring and the timing of recognition of revenue change. Determining compensation incentives that reward real growth will require...

One of the biggest issues facing boards today is setting goals for incentive plans. How do companies find that balance between motivating executives, aligning with the company's strategic goals, and satisfying shareholders? This article by ClearBridge analyzed the goals for...

We came across a recent report that we thought would be interesting to our readers. With the debate growing on whether or not TSR measures are the best approach for performance-based long-term incentives, this study highlights and discusses some other metric alternatives and...

The following excerpt was taken from a Harvard Business Review article in March of 2017. How do you think boards should evaluate themselves? "The New York Stock Exchange requires that the boards of all publicly traded corporations conduct a self-evaluation at least annually to...

"Executive compensation has always been a difficult topic and as executive wages have grown rapidly since the financial crisis, while the wages of the average worker have stagnated, the debate around executive compensation has only become fiercer. Companies have responded to the...

Our consultants took a keen interest when the IRS updated its golden parachute payment qualification requirements. Our 280g calculation & qualification experts continue their advisory role for businesses including audit support for CPAs. Check out these IRS audit tips from BNA...

"Board of Directors pay continues its upward trend according to a study published by Total Compensation Solutions (TCS). The Board compensation report shows increases of approximately 7 to 8 percent from last year for annual retainers for the Chairman, and Regular Board Members...

Companies, shareholders and boards of directors want to ensure alignment of pay and performance to justify the often-high accompanying price tag of executive compensation. To provide context on the correlations between awarded, realizable and actual pay earned under...

"In order to understand the financial performance measures, target goals, performance ranges, and payouts of an annual incentive plan, we analyzed the proxy-disclosed practices of approximately 100 manufacturing and materials companies. We assessed year-over-year (YOY) trends in...

Check out this interesting read regarding the new say on pay rules, form 10-k summaries, and a guide for proxy season. "As another year comes to a close, it is time for public companies to become acquainted with the securities law and business developments of the past year...

"The criteria for earning short-term incentive (STI) compensation appear to have entered a state of flux, judging by new research from the CFO Alliance. In particular, some companies are putting non-financial metrics, like customer or employee satisfaction, into the mix. But far...

ISS has published the U.S. Frequently Asked Questions for Equity Plan Compensation, Executive Compensation, Pay-for-Performance Mechanics, and U.S. Peer Selection (available here). In addition, an updated PFP white paper to reflect the new financial performance alignment test...

"Last month, the IRS provided helpful guidance under Code Section 409A with the release of its Chief Counsel Advice 201645012 (the CCA). The CCA is noteworthy because the IRS agreed that a 25% increase qualified as a materially greater amount, and thus deferred salary was...

2015 middle market executive compensation trends foreshadowed momentum companies are seeing in 2016. In Q2, the National Center for the Middle Market reported 7.2 percent revenue growth over the previous year, and while companies entered the year with some caution, 2015 pay...

One thing is for certain, the results of the election created a myriad of questions regarding the future of American politics. Less certain, though, is the level of impact the results will have on the futures of various executive compensation and corporate governance policies...

Sandra Pace, Managing Partner, Steven Hall & Partners, and Michael Sherry, CECP, Consultant, Steven Hall & Partners, discuss why organizations may be struggling to maintain their incentive programs, emerging considerations, pitfalls, and best practices. View the video...

"Late last month, the SEC issued (and this month it posted) a No-Action Letter rejecting Apple’s attempt to exclude a shareholder proposal on executive compensation. The proposal was an odd one, with a quirky supporting statement, apparently submitted by a retail investors on...

"The problem with creating an incentive plan is that your employees just might do whatever you incentivize them to do. If you pay bonuses based solely on earnings growth, then you might not only get growth in earnings but also really bad loans that eventually sink the bank. If...

"Whether you’re looking at a mutual fund or company stock, you want to see the management team having a significant amount of their own 'skin in the game' through a large commitment of personal financial resources. While this doesn’t guarantee success, at least you know the...

On October 18, 2016, the staff of the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission published five new Compliance & Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs) related to CEO pay ratio disclosures. The CDIs provide some clarity on how companies can begin...

Here are some trending hot topics in executive compensation, written by Brad Smith at Findley...

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (“ISS”), the influential proxy advisory firm, recently released their 2016-2017 Global Policy Survey results. These results show some interesting findings related to executive compensation and may signal the future of ISS policies...

This presentation by NFP Compensation Consulting will identify the differences of today's workforce with four very different generations of Workers: Baby boomers, Gen X, Millennials & Gen Z. The discussion will include what motivates the different generations along with the...

"Public companies in the U.S. will be required to disclose the ratio of CEO pay to median employee pay in their 2018 proxy statements—reporting on fiscal year 2017—and many are already working through the calculations involved. Prudent companies are also considering the...

We want to share a Wall Street Journal article entitled, "Why Basing Executive Compensation on a Formula Doesn’t Work," that supports our message to clients that a formula isn’t the “end all, be all” approach for executive...

We would like to share an article by Matthew Heller that discusses an Equilar survey that found CFO pay growth at S&P 500 firms is outpacing that of CEOs and performance-based equity is gaining...

Today we feature a blog post by Cydney Posner "highlighting a call for companies to reconsider their growing reliance on long-term incentive pay in executive compensation programs." This article is definitely interesting; however, when does "efficient currency", in this case...

Last week, the analysis we conducted for the Houston Chronicle (regarding compensation among the highest paid executives of Houston's publicly traded companies) was mentioned in an article on MySanAntonio.com entitled, "Executive Pay Still Rising Despite Energy's...