Analysis of COVID-19's impact on Intel, Microsoft, and Amazon's Corporal Governance

Abstract

Since 2019 the breakout of Covid-19, the pandemic has strongly impacted individuals’ lives and economic activities. Although there was much research on the influence of Covid-19, fewer researchers studied the relationship between the impact of the pandemic and companies’ compensation policies. Therefore, the main goal of this essay is to analyze the influence of Covid- 19 on technology companies’ compensation policies. We chose three technology companies: Intel, Amazon, and Microsoft, and studied their proxy statement to collect the data on their director compensation and executive compensation from 2019 to 2021. After the comparison, we find that, for Intel, director compensation expenditure rises first in 2019 but drops dramatically in the following two years, with the executive compensation expenditure constantly decreasing from 2019 to 2021; for Microsoft, changes in director compensation are subtle during the pandemic and those in executive compensation are in the same direction with Intel; for Amazon, its expenditure on both director compensation and executive compensation drops rises magnificently from 2020 to 2021, showing a completely different trend from other two companies. This result shows that some technology corporates suffer loss from COVID-19, while some do not. The result also suggests that for those who want to serve as directors and executives in tech companies during the pandemic, a compensation policy with a several-year-long vesting period might be more beneficial and risk averse.