Boards of directors, particularly committees, have seen a lot more scrutiny over the past few years, and with rules governing their affiliations being enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, this is just the beginning. Equilar’s latest report investigates how this new frontier is affecting the way board and committee members and chairs are selected and paid. Here are a few of our findings:

• Median board member pay for the S&P 1500 was $142,500. This figure only includes board-related, not committee-related, pay. S&P 500 members had a median pay of $190,000, while members of the other two S&P groups were slightly below the median for the entire cohort.
• Audit committee chairs and members still get paid the most, but their pay has tended to be stagnant or declining from 2007 to 2009. Compensation committee chairs have seen a pay jump in that period, perhaps thanks to the increased attention to their work. Compensation and governance committee members saw mostly stagnant pay figures as well.
• Governance committee members are the most tenured in all three groups, followed by compensation and audit committee members.
• Audit committees meet the most, followed by compensation and governance committees.
• The prevalence of meeting fees for both chairs and members fell in all three S&P groups, while the prevalence of annual retainers rose. (One notable exception: governance committees in the S&P 400 saw the opposite effect.)
• In 2009, the most prevalent pay structure for chairs was annual retainer and meeting fees, while the second most common structure was annual retainer only. The most prevalent pay structure for members was meeting fees only, with over 60 percent prevalence over all committees.

Interested in seeing more detailed figures? Click on the relevant S&P group to request a report:

• S&P 500 Committee Trends (Large-caps)
• S&P 400 Committee Trends (Mid-caps)
• S&P 600 Committee Trends (Small-caps)