Executive Directors' Remuneration in Comparative Corporate Perspective

‘Attitude’ looms large in any discussion of executive compensation. Yet here is a book that restricts its remit to what can actually be discovered about the corporate and contractual facts, figures, and rationales that determine how much a company director ‘earns’ in an increasingly complex system of executive remuneration that seems to be taking root worldwide. In a remarkably insightful collection of articles, legal scholars from ten different countries address the state of the art of executive service contracts in twelve different jurisdictions, as diverse as (on the one hand) the European Union, its central Member States and the United States, and (on the other) Iceland and Romania. Their analysis penetrates beyond the often vague regulatory framework to actual survey figures, consultants’ reports, and even data from a number of specific firms.

Notwithstanding all the efforts of regulators and scholars, concise and accurate information of the content of executive service contracts is still scarce. However, the contributors to this book synthesize what can be brought to light on such aspects of executive compensation, in the countries covered, as the following:

• measures of base salary–total ‘package’ proportion;
• long-term incentive and option schemes;
• clawback scenarios;
• what CEO employment contracts contain;
• separation of powers between shareholders and the supervisory board;
• disclosure requirements; and
• ‘unfair and unreasonable’ bonuses.

In summary, this incomparable book provides the most thorough (diminished only by the subject’s pervasive lack of transparency) legal analysis of this extremely topical subject. Not only in its comparative method, but also in its wealth of specific detail on determinants of executive remuneration.