New SEC Disclosure Rules Take Toll on GC Bonuses; Average Drops Below $1M
The total average cash bonus for general counsel at Fortune 500 companies has dropped by 18 percent, to below $1 million, and new SEC disclosure rules may be partly to blame.
The average cash bonus, a combination of traditional bonuses and nonequity incentive compensation, is $947,781, Corporate Counsel reports. Traditional cash bonuses dropped 37.1 percent and nonequity incentive compensation, which is tied to performance targets such as profit or revenue, dropped 10 percent.
The story links the drop to new Securities and Exchange Commission rules that require companies to provide details about how they calculate compensation for top executives. “A narrative of the process must be provided—a Story of the Pay,” Corporate Counsel says. “And discretionary bonuses are a story not all companies want to tell.”
Still, the news isn’t all bad. Pay for GCs is up 3.8 percent, to about $619,000, and stock awards are up 5.6 percent, to $1.2 million. “These aren’t huge increases, but in a world where flat is the new up, they helped hold the doom and gloom at bay, at least for now,” the story says.
The general counsel who received the fattest paycheck and bonus compensation this year was Russell Deyo of Johnson & Johnson, according to a Corporate Counsel chart. His salary of about $832,000 was below that of many other top GCs, but his bonus and nonequity compensation amounted to $3.6 million.
