We are proud to announce the publication of our 2017 Corporate Governance & Executive Compensation Survey of the 100 largest U.S. public companies. This year’s Survey, the 15th in our series, examines some of the most important governance and executive compensation practices and identifies best practices and emerging trends. We hope that the data and insights on how leading companies are approaching important governance issues will serve as a tool for our readers to benchmark the corporate governance and compensation practices of their own organizations against those of the companies surveyed.
This year’s Survey presents our findings and insights on several of the key issues that have been of increasing focus for shareholders. These include proxy access; IPO governance, including multi-class voting structures; shareholder activism; diversity; shareholder engagement; compensation clawback policies; and the director self-evaluation process. In many cases we examine the evolution of these practices over time after drawing comparisons from our past survey results. We also report on perennial topics such as say-on-pay, board composition and leadership, shareholder proposals, stock ownership guidelines for executives and directors, executive perks and director compensation.
Methodology
We reviewed the corporate governance and compensation practices of 100 of the largest U.S. public, non-controlled companies that have equity securities listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ. These companies, selected based on a combination of their latest annual revenues and market capitalizations, are referred to as the “Top 100 Companies.” Generally, we derived the data in this Survey from the annual proxy statements, compensation committee charters and corporate governance guidelines posted on the companies’ websites and available as of June 1, 2017 (except where otherwise noted).