Say-on-Pay Voting and CEO Compensation Structure

Abstract

I examine how the structure of CEO compensation affects Say-on-Pay (SOP) voting and how SOP outcomes influence subsequent changes to compensation structure. I find that voting dissent decreases as the percent of performance sensitive compensation including equity and non-equity incentive increases. Additionally, investors vote more favorably when equity comes in the form of performance-vested equity or stock options as opposed to time-vested restricted stock. Subsequent to higher levels of voting dissent, however, I do not find that firms make changes to align compensation structure with investor preferences for more performance sensitive compensation as expressed through prior voting. Instead, I find that firms with greater SOP voting dissent in the prior year tend to increase performance-vested equity and decrease stock options in CEO compensation. A 20% increase in votes “Against” in the prior year SOP vote is associated with a 3.9% increase in performance-vested equity as a percent of total compensation and a 2.3% decrease in stock options. These results demonstrate that, while SOP voting is influencing compensation structure, it is not clear that these changes are resulting in more performance sensitive compensation.