2011 Equity Trends Report - Update

This March, Equilar released an initial report on trends in equity vehicles for early proxy filers. Now that proxy season has come to a close, we've been able to compile a full report on updated equity trends in the S&P 1500. A few of our findings:

• Stock options are down, restricted stock is up. The median number of total stock options granted by S&P 1500 firms fell at an annual rate of 3.8 percent from 2006 to 2010. In that same period, the prevalence of companies reporting restricted-stock grants rose from 74.9 percent to 89.9 percent.
• More companies are requesting additional shares. The percentage of firms with share requests for at least one plan rose from 23.8 percent in 2006 to 32.5 percent in 2010.
• CEOs and NEOs are getting larger slices of the equity pie. The amount of options granted to CEOs as a percentage of total options granted rose from 6.2 percent in 2006 to 7.4 percent in 2010. The amount of restricted-share grants to CEOs also increased, from 1.2 percent in 2006 to 3.4 percent in 2010. The same trend held true for NEOs.

For more information, including data on overhang, run rate, and FAS 123R assumptions, request the complete 2011 Equity Trends Update Report below.