Despite public outrage at excessive executive pay, so far at this year’s annual meetings investors have generally voted in favor of company packages, reports the Cincinnati Enquirer.
“It turns out (U.S.) shareholders may be more accepting of how things work than the perception really is,” said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
Across the Atlantic however, five companies in England have lost shareholder votes on executive pay this year. The latest came today when oil company Royal Dutch Shell Group’s pay plan was rejected. While investor support remains strong in the United States, the number of shareholder proposals asking for a nonbinding investor vote on executive pay has doubled since 2007 to more than 100 this year.
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed making it easier for shareholders to nominate directors for ballots of public companies. Investors owning as little as one percent of the 700 largest U.S. companies would be able to put their board nominees on the annual proxy ballot sent to all company shareholders, under the new SEC proposal.