Pago a los Ceo´s y Contribucion al valor de la empresa

...

En tanto que agentes de la empresa y los miembros del público no están de acuerdo sobre los supuestos cualitativos y cuantitativos clave con respecto a cómo se debe establecer la retribución del CEO, es probable que siga siendo controvertido el tema de la compensación de los ejecutivos.

Por qué es importante

- La compensación es un acuerdo de distribución de valor económico entre el empleado y el empleador. Si bien este cálculo es hecho explícitamente en ciertos valores de los trabajos - como la venta, corretaje empresas, fondos de cobertura, capital privado, capital de riesgo, profesionales deportes y entretenimiento - que rara vez se hace de forma explícita de manera a nivel ejecutivo. Por qué no?

- La encuesta sugiere que muchos CEOs y directores no están de acuerdo sobre las mejores medidas de creación de valor de la empresa, con los CEO favoreciendo cambios en las medidas de rentabilidad y directores favoreciendo las medidas basadas en el mercado, tales como el rendimiento total para el accionista. ¿Cuál de estos da una imagen más precisa de rendimiento corporativo? Al medir el rendimiento, ¿cómo debe la junta de directores controlar las fluctuaciones en el mercado y la economía en general?

- La encuesta también sugiere que los directores creen que los CEOs tienen una influencia considerable sobre los resultados corporativos, dándoles crédito por aproximadamente el 40 por ciento del rendimiento de la organización. ¿Es esta estimación exacta o exagerada? ¿tiene una estimación alta explicar en parte por qué los niveles de pago actual de los CEO son tan altos como lo son.

- Un método para demostrar el "pago por desempeño" es calcular la relación entre la retribución obtenida por un director general durante un período designado y la creación de valor durante ese período. ¿Por qué no hay más empresas que hacen este cálculo? ¿Los resultados de este análisis calman la controversia sobre el pago al CEO o la exacerban?

CEO Pay, performance, and

value sharing

CEO compensation is a controversial subject that evokes considerable debate on whether public company CEOs are paid

correctly both in level and relative to corporate performance.

Recent surveys by the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and Heidrick & Struggles highlight the extreme disconnect between public perception of CEO pay and the perception of directors responsible for designing pay packages at Fortune 500 companies. While 65 percent of directors believe that CEO pay is not a problem, a full 70 percent of the American public believe that it is.

In terms of recourse, members of the public and corporate directors are also divided. Sixty-two percent of the public believe that CEO pay should be capped relative to that of the average worker, and 49 percent favor some type of government intervention to change current practices. Potential remedies favored by these respondents include substantial tax increases, strict limits on absolute and relative pay levels, a required increase in performance-based compensation, and elimination of stock options and equity-based awards. By contrast, corporate directors strongly oppose external intervention. Eighty-four percent believe that there should be no limit to CEO pay relative to that of the average worker, and almost all (98 percent) oppose government intervention in all forms (see Exhibit 1).

These results demonstrate the public relations challenge that corporate directors face explaining and justifying CEO pay arrangements, including how compensation ties to corporate performance and shareholder-value creation.

Pay for performance and value sharing

CEO compensation packages represent an economic sharing arrangement between a company and an executive. In principle, the level and structure of compensation offered to an executive should reflect the pay necessary to attract, retain, and motivate him or her to create value for a company—taking into account the supply and demand of a competitive labor market and the pay opportunities available at alternative employers. A simple value sharing equation might be as follows (see Exhibit 2):

1. How much value is expected to be created over a designated period?

2. How much does the executive team and CEO personally contribute to value creation?

3. What portion of this contribution should be given to the CEO as compensation?

The difficulty that boards face in justifying CEO pay levels in some ways stems from the challenge of quantifying the answers to these three important questions.

First, there is no clear cut method for measuring value creation.

To the extent that stock prices accurately and efficiently reflect changes in corporate value, total shareholder return might be the most accurate measure of value creation in a given period; however, to the extent that the prices of individual securities are influenced by exogenous broad-market trends or behavioral sentiment, total shareholder return might be inadequate. Similarly, profitability metrics (such as operating income, free cash flow, or earnings per share) are influenced by possibly uncontrollable macroeconomic and cyclicality factors. Moreover, it is not completely clear how to convert these operating metrics into shareholder value (i.e., they must be capitalized at appropriate interest rates to arrive at an estimate of value creation).

Survey data demonstrates the disagreement that board members and chief executive officers have over the most appropriate method of measuring value creation. While directors are more likely to believe that total shareholder return is the best measure of company performance, CEOs are more likely to believe that profitability measures (operating income and free cash flow) are best. This is perhaps not too surprising since CEOs are more likely to have a direct influence on operating performance than stock prices. Still, no single measure receives consensus support, and most companies do not measure corporate performance with a single metric (see Exhibit 3).

It is also extremely difficult to quantify the contribution that an executive team, much less an individual executive, makes to overall organizational performance. Researchers have tried to estimate the value a CEO contributes with highly mixed results.

For