Equilar Releases Part Two of 2013 S&P 1500 Board Profile Series

Report Explores Board Committee Pay Practices and Differences among Board Committees

REDWOOD CITY, CA (October 31, 2013) – Equilar, the leader in executive compensation benchmarking and governance research, today released the second of a three-part report series on S&P 1500 company practices related to board retainers, committee fees, and board composition. For this second report in the series, Equilar partnered with Semler Brossy Consulting Group to study how boards of directors utilize committee member retainers and meeting fees to compensate for board committee work. The report explores a variety of topics including committee retainers, meeting fees, and the prevalence of these forms of board compensation.

“Each committee has a specific charter to uphold and varied responsibilities, therefore boards establish director compensation programs that account for the differences in responsibilities among board committees,” said Aaron Boyd, Equilar’s Director of Governance Research. “However, there is still a high percentage of companies in all types and sizes of public companies that do not provide additional compensation for committee service.”

“Committee pay is one of the most rapidly evolving areas of compensation for boards of directors, and Equilar’s analysis provides all of the details needed to assess the changes that are occurring over time. Meeting fees are being replaced by committee retainers, pay is being differentiated more and more between different committees and committee chairs, and overall practices are beginning to ‘standardize’ across industries to some extent,” said John Borneman, Managing Director at Semler Brossy. “All of these changes can be found in this report, and we appreciate the opportunity to provide additional context and perspective along with the data.”

In its S&P 1500 Board Profile: Committee Fees Report, Equilar found growing differences between industry groups for the retainers they pay compensation committee members. For instance, in 2008 most industries paid a median compensation committee retainer of $5,000, but by 2012 there was greater variance in all industry groups.

For compensation committee and audit committee member retainers, Equilar found consistency only in the S&P 500, as compared to other indices. In 2012, most companies in the S&P 500 used a retainer of $10,000 for members of the compensation and audit committees.

About Equilar

Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Equilar is the leading provider of executive compensation data and governance tools for corporations, nonprofits, consulting firms, institutional investors, and the media. As the trusted data and executive solutions provider to 70% of the Fortune 500, Equilar helps companies accurately benchmark and track executive and board compensation, pay for performance results, and compensation practices. In addition, Equilar offers a leading business and event networking solution focused on serving executives and board members. Equilar’s research is cited regularly by Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other leading media outlets.