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Executive Compensation: Shareholders’ Legal Rights Should Be Strengthened as Protection against Excessive CEO Compensation
A Weekly BDO Dunwoody CEO Business Leader Poll by COMPAS in the Financial Post

In the wake of recent stories about substantive compensation packages, the COMPAS panel of CEOs and business leaders was asked to revisit the issue. The main findings are that:

• Most panelists believe that shareholder rights on compensation issues should be strengthened under the law;
  
  
• CEOs of public companies continue to be perceived as overpaid;
  
  
• The idea of requiring independent directors to determine compensation was a desirable reform—yet, compensation committees earn relatively poor performance grades from the panel;
  
  
• CEO compensation, ideally a combination of salary and equity, should be tied more closely to company performance than heretofore.
  

These are the key findings from the past week’s web survey of the COMPAS CEO and business leader panel undertaken for The Financial Post under sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody LLP.