Say on Pay: Do Shareholders Care [Video]

Contributor(s): Dr Carsten Gerner-Beuerle and Dr Tom Kirchmaier | The authors discuss the British regulation of executive remuneration, which is characterised by the unique feature of two votes, one forward looking on the company’s remuneration report, and one backward looking on the director’s annual remuneration package. Using the pay information disclosed by FTSE 100 companies, research shows that shareholders guide their vote by top line salary and appear to disregard the remaining substantial body of information provided to them. Shareholders differentiate between the two voting dimensions in about 23% of the cases. In contrast to the rationale of the legislation that introduced the two votes, however, differentiating voting behaviour is not driven by characteristics of the executive’s remuneration policy, but mainly by exceptionally positive future performance expectations.