SEC Advances Executive Compensation Disclosure Reform
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today proposed to improve the disclosures by institutional investors on how they vote for executive compensation plans at publicly traded companies. Many individual investors hold stock through mutual funds, a class of institutional investor, but may not dictate how the mutual fund votes. Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate for Public Citizen, released the following statement:
“Executive compensation levels long ago broke the sanity barrier, with some CEOs raking in more in an hour what the average worker earns in a year. That’s only possible if shareholders approve these plans. The SEC’s proposal can help customers of mutual funds better understand if the stewards of their investment are enablers or reformers of runaway pay packages.”