Six Challenges In Designing Equity‐Based Pay

The past two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the equitybased pay of U.S. corporate executives, an increase that has been driven almost entirely by the explosion of stock option grants. When properly designed, equity‐based pay can raise corporate productivity and shareholder value by helping companies attract, motivate, and retain talented managers. But there are good reasons to question whether the current forms of U.S. equity pay are optimal. In many cases, substantial stock and option payoffs to top executives–particularly those who cashed out much of their holdings near the top of the market–appear to have come at the expense of their shareholders, generating considerable skepticism about not just executive pay practices, but the overall quality of U.S. corporate governance. At the same time, many companies that have experienced sharp stock price declines are now struggling with the problem of retaining employees holding lots of deep‐underwater options. This article discusses the design of equity‐based pay plans that aim to motivate sustainable, or long‐run, value creation. As a first step, the author recommends the use of longer vesting periods and other requirements on executive stock and option holdings, both to limit managers' ability to “time” the market and to reduce their incentives to take shortsighted actions that increase near‐term earnings at the expense of longer‐term cash flow. Besides requiring “more permanent” holdings, the author also proposes a change in how stock options are issued. In place of popular “fixed value” plans that adjust the number of options awarded each year to reflect changes in the share price (and that effectively reward management for poor performance by granting more options when the price falls, and fewer when it rises), the author recommends the use of “fixed number” plans that avoid this unintended distortion of incentives. As the author also notes, there is considerable confusion about the real economic cost of options relative to stock. Part of the confusion stems, of course, from current GAAP accounting, which allows companies to report the issuance of at‐the‐money options as costless and so creates a bias against stock and other forms of compensation. But, coming on top of the “opportunity cost” of executive stock options to the company's shareholders, there is another, potentially significant cost of options (and, to a lesser extent, stock) that arises from the propensity of executives and employees to place a lower value on company stock and options than well‐diversified outside investors. The author's conclusion is that grants of (slow‐vesting) stock are likely to have at least three significant advantages over employee stock options: ▪ they are more highly valued by executives and employees (per dollar of cost to shareholders); ▪ they continue to provide reasonably strong ownership incentives and retention power, regardless of whether the stock price rises or falls, because they don't go underwater; and ▪ the value of such grants is much more transparent to stockholders, employees, and the press.