Last week we released our annual Executive Stock Ownership Guidelines report, and today, we followed-up with the director guidelines. Not many suprises here, but like the executive guidelines, both required some updating in this challenging economic environment

Released today with the Executive Compensation Trends newsletter, the report covered 240 filing companies and found that 186 of those companies disclosed ownership policies.

A few notable findings:

• The prevalence of ownership policies was 82.1 percent.
• There was an increase in holding requirements, to nearly 20 percent of companies.
• 57.5 percent of companies defined ownership guidelines as a multiple of the annual retainer.
• There was a significant increase in disclosures of hardship provisions.
• The median target ownership for directors was $250,000.

The complete report is provided to all Equilar customer subscribers through Equilar’s Knowledge Center. Non-subscribers can request a copy of the report here.

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Tags: Executive Compensation, Ownership Guidelines

In the just-released Equilar Executive Ownership Guidelines Report, we shed some light on how Fortune 250 companies are dealing with the impact of the market swings on their previous ownership guidelines. In last week’s Executive Compensation Trends newsletter, I highlighted that there was a 75% jump in companies disclosing hardship provisions.

The vast majority (83.5%) of executive ownership guidelines use a multiple of base salary. IE, they require the executives to accumulate shares with a value of some multiple of their base salary. CEOs were required to have the highest multiple on average at 5x while the VP level on average was required to hold 1.5x. Interestingly enough, we found that the lowest CEO ownership multiple was 2x and the highest was 25x base salary.

A few companies disclosed a suspension of their ownership requirements until stock prices reach a higher level or when there is more certainty in the market.

Due to the decline in the company’s stock price in early 2009, Aflac decided to suspend its ownership requirements beginning in February 2009. Here’s Aflac’s March 19 filing:

Aflac Inc. (AFL)

“All of the Company’s NEOs have stock ownership that exceeds their ownership guidelines except for Mr. Tonoike, who has not been in his current position for at least four years. The Corporate Governance Committee approved a moratorium for compliance with the stock ownership guidelines at its meeting held in February 2009, based on the significant decline in the Company’s common stock price in early 2009.”

Many more details and findings are available in our 35+ page report. Equilar customer subscribers have complimentary access to all of our reports. Non-subscribers can request a copy of the report here.

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Tags: compensation disclosure, corporate executives, Executive Compensation, executive compensation trends, Ownership Guidelines

As we are finishing up our extensive research on executive ownership guidelines (due out next week), we found a number of interesting trends. We identified a substantial increase in hardship provisions disclosed.

From today’s Equilar Executive Compensation Trends we found that 82.1% of Fortune 250 companies disclosed that they have ownership guidelines. 32 companies stated that they had executives that did not achieve the required ownership level, which is the same amount of companies as the previous year.

There was a significant jump of nearly 75% year-over-year in companies disclosing hardship provisions. These provisions typically allow for more time or amended ownership requirements in order to meet those guidelines.

You can request the article, which has disclosure examples and additional information on director hardship provisions as well. Visit here.

If you’re an Equilar Executive Compensation Trends subscriber you would have seen this alert earlier today. You can sign up here.

Tags: CEO compensation, Executive Compensation, executive compensation trends, hardship provisions, Ownership Guidelines