Hats off to the Brits who have voted against excessive CEO pay a few times this year and shame on the American investors. (Whether shame exists for them is another issue though.) Somehow US investors remain impressed with the bloated pay packages of the failed corporate leaders. If ever there was an example of why we need more shakeups on Wall Street, it's here. The incestuous relationships need to go. When Wall Street talks rolls out the old "if we don't give in, these people will leave" shtick, this is what they're supporting. The old relationships are rotten to the core and new people are desperately needed. Let the old guard leave. All of them. We'll survive and probably do better.
But so far during this spring's annual meeting season, there have been few examples of investors fighting back. Shareholders have yet to vote down a single executive pay plan at U.S. companies and only a handful of corporate directors have lost investor backing. Support for corporate management is still the status quo.
"It turns out (U.S.) shareholders may be more accepting of how things work than the perception really is," said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
In contrast, five companies in England already have lost shareholder votes on executive pay this year. The latest came Tuesday when oil company Royal Dutch Shell Group's pay plan was rejected. There was also significant dissent, though not by a majority, at three other British companies, according to RiskMetrics, a financial risk management company.
