The gender pay gap is receiving increasing levels of attention. While a few companies have been able to report the elimination of any gender pay gap, general industry statistics indicate the presence of a gender pay gap of 75.9¢ to 94.6¢ earned by women per each dollar earned by men (depending on adjustments for age, education, experience, etc.)

Spring is in the air, and executive compensation consultants are busy reading a cascade of public filings and proxy advisor reports as we analyze and are asked to predict trends in executive pay in 2017 and beyond. One of the most common questions in executive compensation this year concerns what will become of the Dodd-Frank mandated CEO pay ratio set to be disclosed publicly for most companies beginning with proxies filed in 2018 – if not delayed or overturned beforehand. Earlier this year, acting Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Michael Piwowar took the unusual step of requesting additional comments on the cost and burden of complying with the already approved CEO pay ratio rule, which would require companies to disclose the ratio of CEO pay to that of the median employee.

Say on Pay (SOP) and shareholder advisor vote recommendations have caused a dramatic increase in the use of relative total shareholder return (TSR) as a long-term incentive (LTI) plan performance metric.

The CHOICE Act is designed to rewrite many of the rules and provisions contained in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protect Act ("Dodd-Frank"). The proposed legislation was passed on a party-line vote of 34-26 and has advanced to the full House for a vote at some future date. The legislation is expected to pass the House due to its Republican majority.

Since advisory Say on Pay ("SOP") votes became effective in 2011, ISS and Glass Lewis have exerted significant influence over the vote outcomes for these proposals. These advisors use quantitative tests to assess CEO Pay for Performance ("P4P") alignment and supplement those quantitative assessments with a qualitative review of pay practices/program design.

In the first 3 months of 2017, our firm's partners and consulting staff attended more than 200 corporate Boards of Directors compensation committee meetings in our role as executive compensation advisors. From attending these meetings, we have learned a great deal about certain issues emerging as dominant themes in Board discussions about executive pay and corporate governance.

In the aftermath of the failed Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") repeal and replace effort, the United States' new administration announced its intent to shift focus to other high-priority issues. As noted in the latest press accounts, President Trump is anxious to tackle a comprehensive rewrite of the Tax Code.

In recent years, the SEC has developed extensive rules and regulations regarding the reporting of executive compensation in the company annual proxy. Such reporting includes the narrative discussion of CD&A executive compensation policies and practices as they pertain to the CEO and NEOs. Additionally, the SEC requires that companies provide numerous prescribed tables and schedules reporting the historical elements of executive pay for the most recently completed fiscal year as well as the past 2 fiscal years.

The rise in both the prevalence and prominence of long-term performance plans has been one of the most significant trends in executive compensation over the past 15 years. At the time of the dot-com market collapse (March 2000 to October 2002) and the demise of several prominent U.S. companies (e.g., the Enron scandal revealed in October 2001), long-term performance plans were only used by a relatively small portion of large U.S. public companies.

In the Dodd-Frank Act legislation after the 2008 Financial Crisis, the inclusion of shareholder SOP voting was driven by bipartisan Congressional support to "control executive compensation…" at corporations. In 2009, a former SEC chief accountant said, "Executive compensation at this point in time has gotten woefully out of hand... The time to adopt 'say on pay' type legislation is certainly past due." Politicians, regulators, and some institutional shareholders clearly thought that, "The impetus for passage of Dodd-Frank's say-on-pay requirement in 2011 focused on remedying ‘excessive' CEO pay."