Equilar® Releases New Study on Fortune 500 CEO Equity Awards in the Fourth Quarter of 2007
For Release: January 30, 2008
Redwood Shores, CA - Equilar, the market leader for executive compensation benchmarking solutions, today published its latest issue of Executive Compensation Trends. This month's issue features a study on fourth quarter CEO equity awards at Fortune 500 companies. Key findings include:
The Prevalence of Performance-Based Equity Awards Increases: Among Fortune 500 CEOs, the percentage of shares (including stock and options) awarded with performance-based vesting criteria increased from 8.2 percent of all shares granted in Q4 2006 to 14.7 percent of all shares granted in Q4 2007.
Stock Option Awards Rise: From Q4 2006 to Q4 2007, the overall number of stock options granted to Fortune 500 chief executives increased by 18.2 percent. This increase was driven, in part, by a 328.5 percent increase in the number of options granted with performance-based vesting criteria.
Full-Value Share Awards Fall: From Q4 2006 to Q4 2007, the overall number of full-value shares granted to Fortune 500 chief executives fell by 10.2 percent. This drop was largely fueled by a 96.1 percent decline in the number of performance-based restricted stock units awarded.
To learn more about these CEO equity findings, please call 1-877-441-6090 or e-mail us.
