It’s obvious that many firms are leaning on their compensation committee chairs to serve as figureheads to shareholders and the media that everything is proceeding correctly– and that they’re giving these folks a pay bump to compensate for the increased responsibility. Board members and chairs of S&P 1500 firms still make a median $142,500, according to the study, which can seem like small change in a world of multi-million-dollar executive salaries and bonuses. Only time will tell if the Dodd-Frank-related shifts in the industry will extend to them, or if they’ll continue to remain fairly unshaken by the new landscape.

You can request the full reports here: Large-caps, mid-caps, small-caps.

But while there may not be any Tootsie Roll-sized gaffes in the mix, it’s clear that the trend of smaller companies benchmarking to larger companies is far from over. The S&P 600 (small-caps) had a median revenue rank in the 38th percentile compared to their peers, while their mid-cap compatriots were at the 43rd percentile. The S&P 500 achieved the optimum balance, at a median of the 50th percentile. For the entire S&P 1500, 76.9 percent of companies had median revenues at or below the 60th percentile of their peer group.

Request the full report to see more peer group data, including specific disclosure examples.

The good news is that most of the Fortune 100 is already on the clawback train, with a good chunk more or less Dodd-Frank compliant. 82.1 percent of F100 companies had a 2010 clawback policy, up from a mere 17 percent just four years ago. 81.3 percent of these policies cover any financial restatement, 78 percent cover executive misbehavior, and 63.7 percent require both. Cash incentives are covered at 87 percent of companies, and equity incentives are included at 81.5 percent.

Unsurprisingly, the financial industry leads the clawback field, with 90.5 percent disclosing a policy (as required by TARP). Once Dodd-Frank goes into effect, the Wall Street wizards will have plenty of company in the clawback arena, and a number of other exec comp arenas as well. You can request the full report for more information.

The first major difference is holding requirements. Most of the time, these are combined with ownership guidelines to create a double-strength package. A whopping 40.1 percent of CEOs are subject to them, but only 19.8 percent of directors have the same responsibility. Companies are obviously a lot more concerned about tightening the strings on their CEOs than on their directors– CEOs were required to meet a median ownership target of around $6 million, while the 2009 median for directors was a comparatively meager $262,850.

Directors also get more flexibility in the design of their ownership guidelines. The gold standard for CEOs is multiples of base salary (used by 82.2% of companies), followed by a fixed-number-of-shares target (12.6%). For directors, on the other hand, the design field has widened: while multiples of the retainer (54.8%) and fixed number of shares (23.9%) are still the most common strategies, they’re increasingly losing ground to setting a fixed value of shares (14.4%) or coming up with another, unique plan (7.7%), both of which have risen significantly in occurrence over the past three years.

Request the Executive or Director Stock Ownership Guidelines reports for the full details.

In general, the COO data for 2009 was consistent with what we’ve seen for CEOs and CFOs: pay down, bonuses up, pay-for-performance fairly intact, and 2009 equity awards making up for the majority of 2008 equity awards that are still underwater. One odd change: unlike every other study, where the first and second quartile of COOs by company performance saw bonus leaps, the second quartile in the COO study actually saw its bonuses go down 7.8 percent, while the third quartile’s COOs saw bonuses that rose 20.5 percent. Sounds like a few companies need to show a little more bonus love to their stronger-than-average performers– and a few other companies need to show a little less love to below-average execs. To request the full COO report, click here.

But that doesn’t mean perks have completely disappeared. 50 percent of CEOs in the F100 still get gross-ups, and flexible perquisite accounts, which more or less shield a disbursement of “other” comp from targeted hatred, are on the rise (as is spending on security fees). 66 percent of CEOs still get to take rides on the corporate jet. All in all, the median perks package for a F100 CEO is still $249,632. The decline in perks may be a sign that Corporate America is listening, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re taking drastic action.

Pay Decrease for CFOs in 2009

• Large-cap: 3.1 percent ($2.675 million median total pay)
• Mid-cap: 2.7 percent ($1.399 million)
• Small-cap: 0.64 percent ($840,903)

Bonus Increases for CFOs in 2009

• Large-cap: 20.9 percent ($536,250 median bonus)
• Mid-cap: 14.8 percent ($280,000)
• Small-cap: 10.2 percent ($145,457)

See a trend? CFOs of large-cap companies may have taken the biggest total pay cuts (which still weren’t all that big), but they recouped much larger bonus increases as a reward. Were it not for those pesky 2008 option grants, salaries would be flying pretty high. What’s more, this trend also plays out with the upside-downside of good and bad performance: on a percentage scale, large-cap companies’ CFOs see bigger bonus increases when they perform the best and smaller bonus decreases when they perform the worst. Smaller S&P companies may be under less scrutiny, but they’ve somehow absorbed the “pay for performance” rhetoric more quickly than their large-cap counterparts.

CFOs are also benefiting from the same early-2009 stock grants given to their counterparts, where grant size was often inflated to make up for decreased stock price. Over 85 percent of those options are now in the money. To see all the data, request the report here.

There’s also the question of stock: compared to their large- and mid-cap peers, small-cap CEOs are less likely to have options and more likely to have restricted stock. The share of their earnings that came in cash also shot up 8% between 2008 and 2009.

Ironically, the small-cap companies seem to be most enthusiastic about implementing the type of strictures to which the government would like to bring their big brothers around. In addition to the increased likelihood of restricted stock, bonuses correlate very strongly with performance for this group, with the top-performing quartile of companies raising CEO bonuses 71.1% and the bottom quartile docking them 32.6%.

You can get more information by requesting the full report here. If you’re interested in the S&P 500 and 400, go here and here.

Clawbacks also got some attention in the Journal piece: those who stay abreast of exec comp trends will remember that they rose from around 12% of the Fortune 100 in 2003 to a new high of 72.9% in 2009.

Expect plenty of pot-stirring next week in the aftermath of the New York Times Top 200 pay study, which is based on Equilar data and will be released on Sunday.