IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v45y2020i1p15-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evidence on compensation consultant fees and CEO pay

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Grosse
  • Nelson Ma

    (Accounting Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, NSW, Australia)

  • Tom Scott

    (Accounting Department, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand)

Abstract

Regulators and previous research have expressed concern about the effect of compensation consultants on CEO pay. We use the Australian setting, where fees for both compensation and other consulting services supplied by compensation consultants are mandated disclosures for all firms, to provide evidence on the role of compensation consultants on CEO pay. We find that the use of compensation consultants or remuneration advisers, fees for compensation services and positive residual compensation service fees are associated with higher CEO pay. In contrast, both the provision and the proportion of fees from other services provided by compensation consultants are not. Furthermore, these positive associations are not observed when a Big 4 accounting firm is the compensation consultant. JEL Classification: G38, M12, M48, M52

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Grosse & Nelson Ma & Tom Scott, 2020. "Evidence on compensation consultant fees and CEO pay," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 45(1), pages 15-44, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:45:y:2020:i:1:p:15-44
    DOI: 10.1177/0312896219837999
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0312896219837999
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0312896219837999?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bebchuk, Lucian Arye & Fried, Jesse & Walker, David I, 2002. "Managerial Power and Rent Extraction in the Design of Executive Compensation," CEPR Discussion Papers 3558, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Matthew Grosse & Stephen Kean & Tom Scott & Tom Smith, 2017. "Shareholder say on pay and CEO compensation: three strikes and the board is out," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(3), pages 701-725, September.
    3. Hsu, Audrey Wen-hsin & Shyu, Yi-Ru & Wang, Victoria Shao-Pin, 2014. "Non-compensation-related consultant service and CEO compensation," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 59-75.
    4. Yermack, David, 1996. "Higher market valuation of companies with a small board of directors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 185-211, February.
    5. Murphy, Kevin J., 1985. "Corporate performance and managerial remuneration : An empirical analysis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1-3), pages 11-42, April.
    6. Lucian Bebchuk & Jesse Fried, 2002. "Power, rent extraction, and executive compensation," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 3(03), pages 23-28, October.
    7. Lucian Arye Bebchuk & Jesse M. Fried, 2003. "Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 71-92, Summer.
    8. Core, John E. & Holthausen, Robert W. & Larcker, David F., 1999. "Corporate governance, chief executive officer compensation, and firm performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 371-406, March.
    9. Cadman, Brian & Carter, Mary Ellen & Hillegeist, Stephen, 2010. "The incentives of compensation consultants and CEO pay," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 263-280, April.
    10. Zoltan Matolcsy & Anna Wright, 2011. "CEO compensation structure and firm performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(3), pages 745-763, September.
    11. Goergen, Marc & Renneboog, Luc, 2011. "Managerial compensation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 1068-1077, September.
    12. Martin Bugeja & Raymond da Silva Rosa & Lien Duong & H.Y Izan, 2012. "CEO Compensation from M&As in Australia," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(9-10), pages 1298-1329, November.
    13. Goergen, Marc & Renneboog, Luc, 2011. "Introduction to the special issue on managerial compensation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 1065-1067, September.
    14. Bebchuk, Lucian A. & Fried, Jesse M., 2003. "Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt81q3136r, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    15. Philipp Geiler & Luc Renneboog, 2011. "Managerial Compensation : Agency Solution or Problem," Post-Print hal-02313090, HAL.
    16. Jay C. Hartzell & Laura T. Starks, 2003. "Institutional Investors and Executive Compensation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(6), pages 2351-2374, December.
    17. Lisa Goh & Yong Li, 2015. "Pensions as a Form of Executive Compensation," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(9-10), pages 1154-1187, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clement Olalekan Olaniyi & Ademola Obafemi Young & Xuan Vinh Vo & Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh Al‐Faryan, 2022. "Do institutional framework and its threshold matter in the sensitivity of CEO pay to firm performance? Fresh insights from an emerging market economy," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3386-3403, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hsu, Audrey Wen-hsin & Shyu, Yi-Ru & Wang, Victoria Shao-Pin, 2014. "Non-compensation-related consultant service and CEO compensation," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 59-75.
    2. Ann-Christine Schulz & Miriam Flickinger, 2020. "Does CEO (over)compensation influence corporate reputation?," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 903-927, August.
    3. Ricardo Correa & Ugur Lel, 2013. "Say on pay laws, executive compensation, CEO pay slice, and firm value around the world," International Finance Discussion Papers 1084, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Yaowen Shan & Terry Walter, 2016. "Towards a Set of Design Principles for Executive Compensation Contracts," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 52(4), pages 619-684, December.
    5. Chongwoo Choe & Gloria Tian & Xiangkang Yin, 2008. "Managerial Power, Stock-Based Compensation, And Firm Performance: Theory And Evidence," Monash Economics Working Papers 21/08, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    6. Bugeja, Martin & Matolcsy, Zoltan P. & Spiropoulos, Helen, 2012. "Is there a gender gap in CEO compensation?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 849-859.
    7. James Borthwick & Aelee Jun & Shiguang Ma, 2020. "Changing board behaviour: The role of the ‘Two Strikes’ rule in improving the efficacy of Australian Say‐on‐Pay," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(S1), pages 827-876, April.
    8. Pamela Kent & Kim Kercher & James Routledge, 2018. "Remuneration committees, shareholder dissent on CEO pay and the CEO pay–performance link," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(2), pages 445-475, June.
    9. Yan Liu & Carol Padgett & Simone Varotto, 2017. "Corporate Governance, Bank Mergers and Executive Compensation," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 12-29, January.
    10. Michelle L. Zorn & Christine Shropshire & John A. Martin & James G. Combs & David J. Ketchen Jr., 2017. "Home Alone: The Effects of Lone-Insider Boards on CEO Pay, Financial Misconduct, and Firm Performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(13), pages 2623-2646, December.
    11. Bugeja, Martin & Matolcsy, Zoltan & Spiropoulos, Helen, 2017. "The CEO pay slice: Managerial power or efficient contracting? Some indirect evidence," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 69-87.
    12. Martin Bugeja & Zoltan Matolcsy & Helen Spiropoulos, 2016. "The Association Between Gender-Diverse Compensation Committees and CEO Compensation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(2), pages 375-390, December.
    13. Loureiro, Gilberto & Makhija, Anil K. & Zhang, Dan, 2011. "Why Do Some CEOs Work for a One-Dollary Salary?," Working Paper Series 2011-7, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    14. Choe, Chongwoo & Tian, Gloria Y. & Yin, Xiangkang, 2014. "CEO power and the structure of CEO pay," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 237-248.
    15. Xin Qu & Majella Percy & Fang Hu & Jenny Stewart, 2022. "Can CEO equity‐based compensation limit investment‐related agency problems?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(2), pages 2579-2614, June.
    16. Sautner, Zacharias & Weber, Martin, 2005. "Corporate governance and the design of stock option programs," Papers 05-32, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    17. Ng, Lilian & Sibilkov, Valeriy & Wang, Qinghai & Zaiats, Nataliya, 2011. "Does shareholder approval requirement of equity compensation plans matter?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 1510-1530.
    18. Słomka-Gołębiowska, Agnieszka & Urbanek, Piotr, 2016. "Corporate boards, large blockholders and executive compensation in banks: Evidence from Poland," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 203-220.
    19. Akram, Farheen & Abrar ul haq, Muhammad, 2018. "Assessing the Effect of Managerial Power on Firm Performance through the Perceptual Lens of Executive Remuneration," MPRA Paper 100050, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2019.
    20. Uygur, Ozge, 2019. "Income inequality in S&P 500 companies," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 52-64.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    CEO pay; compensation consultants; consulting fees; executive compensation; remuneration adviser;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation
    • M48 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:45:y:2020:i:1:p:15-44. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.