On April 30, 2015, the Delaware Court of Chancery held for the second time in three years that a decision by a board of directors or a board’s compensation committee to award equity to non-employee directors as part of their annual compensation constituted a self-interested transaction and, when challenged in a stockholder derivative action, that (a) stockholder demand was excused and (b) the decision would be reviewed under the heightened “entire fairness” standard. This holding comes despite the fact that the equity compensation plan in question, which included a per-person limit on grants, was previously approved by the company’s stockholders.

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Davis Polk partner Ed FitzGerald and I spoke in December with Tapestry’s Compensation Committee Leadership Network (CCLN) on forthcoming SEC executive compensation rules, as summarized in this Tapestry Viewpoints. The CCLN brings together a select group of compensation committee chairs from prominent companies to discuss ways to improve the performance of their companies and communicate effectively with shareholders through their compensation committee work.

The discussion included the Dodd-Frank clawback provisions, which as enacted do not consider fault to be a trigger, unlike the most common clawback policies that have already been adopted by companies. The vast majority of those require some form of misconduct.
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A derivative action has been brought in Delaware Chancery Court alleging that Facebook’s board of directors breached their fiduciary duties and unjustly enriched themselves and wasted corporate assets through the compensation paid to the non-executive directors, with “a yearly take beyond what could be considered reasonable.” 

Plaintiff alleges that the individual director compensation of $461,000 is 43% higher than peer companies, including Amazon and Walt Disney, which generate more revenue and profit. In making this peer group calculation, plaintiff removed from Facebook’s disclosed list of peers certain companies, such as Apple, Google and Microsoft. It claims those entities are not comparable to Facebook because their market cap and other financial metrics make them much larger.
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While only 142 Russell 3000 companies have failed say-on-pay in the last three years from over 7,000 companies with those votes, 893 companies had to counter negative recommendations from ISS. By now it is well-known that ISS uses both a quantitative test and then examines qualitative factors. The qualitative review is triggered when a company receives “high” concern on the quantitative metric that examines, among other things, the CEO pay and total shareholder return to other companies, but the review may also occur even when a company receives less than “high” concern. 

The qualitative review becomes critically important because only half of those companies that fail the initial numerical test ever receive “against” recommendations from ISS.
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Disclosure of realizable pay and realized pay may be all the rage, but the fact that a wide range of different practices exists led the Conference Board Working Group on Supplemental Pay Disclosure, working jointly with the Center on Executive Compensation and the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals, to develop a framework to assist in providing greater consistency and comparability. The current ad-hoc approach by companies have been criticized for diminishing the potential value of the disclosure to investors.

The framework outlines 11 conceptual points, including the need to measure performance using primarily total shareholder return (TSR) given that is how investors assess company performance, but also incorporating other financial metrics that can justifiably demonstrate shareholder value. 
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The Ninth Circuit recently issued an opinion in Dennis v. Hart, in which it held that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over various say-on-pay lawsuits originally filed in state court and subsequently removed to federal court. In 2010, the board of directors of PICO Holdings, Inc. increased executive compensation notwithstanding that the company reported negative annual net income and free cash flow for the year. In a May 2011 advisory vote on executive compensation, 61% of PICO’s shareholders voted against the 2010 compensation package. The PICO board, however, made no changes to compensation following the vote.

Shareholders subsequently filed lawsuits in California state court asserting various state common law claims, including breach of fiduciary duty.
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The Second Circuit recently issued a decision that relates to whether a sale of one class of equity security and a purchase of a different class of equity security issued by the same company can be “paired” under Section 16(b) of the Exchange Act to result in required profit disgorgement by the transacting insider. The Court held that, absent any guidance from the SEC, an insider’s purchase and sale of shares of different types of stock in the same company does not trigger liability under Section 16(b) where those different classes of securities are separately traded, nonconvertible and have different voting rights.
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This proxy season there has been a lot of focus on companies filing additional soliciting materials to supplement proxy disclosure, with a particular focus on executive compensation in light of the say-on-pay vote. Exxon Mobil has taken a particularly interesting approach turning a two-dimensional paper communication into something more dynamic by inviting interested persons to a company-sponsored webcast on executive compensation.

The webcast represents an additional proactive step Exxon has taken. On the same day it filed its proxy statement, Exxon took the unusual step of also filing a colorful presentation filled with data, graphs and photos to explain how its pay-for-performance approach focuses on the long-term nature of its capital-intensive business. 
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Glass Lewis released a brief overview that it calls a “Primer for Issuers.” Glass Lewis reiterates that it does not engage in discussions with companies during the proxy solicitation period because of concerns about the possibility of receiving material, nonpublic information. However, it will sometimes host a Proxy Talk conference call during which a company’s management or board can speak directly to Glass Lewis’ clients.

Board Matters. It is not always clear when a director will run afoul of Glass Lewis’ voting recommendations. The Issuer FAQ provides some information about related person transactions, noting that a director who controls more than 20% of voting stock would be deemed an affiliate. 
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Yesterday, the SEC sued two former executives of Arthrocare Corporation, a manufacturer of medical devices, to recover bonuses and stock profits they had received after the company had filed false financial statements. In doing so, the SEC continued its policy of seeking to apply Section 304 of Sarbanes-Oxley to executives who have not been personally charged with the fraudulent financial statements.

Under Section 304, if “an issuer is required to prepare an accounting restatement due to the material noncompliance of the issuer, as a result of misconduct,” then its CEO and CFO is required to reimburse the issuer for certain compensation received or profits made from the sale of the issuer’s stock during the 12-month period after the fraudulent financial statement was filed.
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The Federal Reserve recently released a report detailing its horizontal review of incentive compensation practices at 25 large banking organizations.  The findings and recommendations are expressed in highly general terms, and set forth the Fed’s views on what financial institutions are and should be doing to identify practices effective in balancing incentive compensation arrangements and risk and formulate next steps in developing these practices.  Because the interagency rule on incentive compensation in the financial sector may provide a roadmap for future regulation in this area extending beyond financial institutions, the insight offered by the report may be helpful in structuring incentive compensation policies at any company.
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