Obama plans to expand overtime eligibility for millions of workers

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday announced a proposal that would make nearly 5 million more workers eligible for overtime pay, a move that would touch nearly every sector of the U.S. economy and could face legal challenges.

Obama in an editorial posted on the Huffington Post website said the proposal would more than double the maximum income a salaried worker can earn and still be eligible for overtime pay to $50,440, or $970 a week. The current threshold is $23,660.

"Right now, too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve," Obama wrote.

BY DANIEL WIESSNER

Landing | Tue Jun 30, 2015 7:31am EDT

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SEC proposes rules requiring clawbacks after company restatements

Public companies that re-state their financial results would be required to "claw back," or recover, any excess incentive compensation earned by their corporate executives under a new rule proposed on Wednesday by U.S. regulators.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's plan sparked debate among the agency's five members, with some saying it goes too far and should not be applied to smaller-sized companies.

Republican SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher said the plan creates the "potential for substantial injustice" because it could force people to pay back compensation even if they had nothing to do with the restatement.

WASHINGTON | BY SARAH N. LYNCH

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Dodd-Frank’s Next Act: Executive Pay

Nearly five years after the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was signed into law, the Securities and Exchange Commission has entered the final stretch of the rulemaking required of it under the act.

The agency is drafting new provisions regarding executive compensation disclosure, and like previously implemented Dodd-Frank rules — such as those involving whistleblowers, derivatives, conflict minerals, and proprietary trading by banks — the new provisions have generated much controversy.

Ed Zwirn, June 23, 2015 | CFO.com | US

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Activist Funds Put Executive Pay Formulas Under Microscope

Big shareholders for years have grumbled about the rise in executive pay. Now, activist investors are taking up the compensation cause, focusing less on how much corporate leaders earn and more on whether they deserve what they get.

Case in point: Shutterfly Inc., where an activist hedge fund is seeking three board seats at the online photo retailer at a shareholder vote set for Friday. The founder of Marathon Partners Equity Management LLC said once the fund "started peeling back the onion" on Shutterfly's pay plans, it found "a compensation scheme that had run amok."

By Liz Hoffman, By Dow Jones Business News,  June 11, 2015, 05:51:00 PM EDT

Read more:  http://www.nasdaq.com/article/activist-funds-put-executive-pay-formulas-under-microscope-20150611-00976#ixzz3f3nQOlf4

Penn State Tops Public College Compensation Survey

Pennsylvania State University’s former president Graham Spanier last year received compensation valued at $2.3 million, including the transfer of a life-insurance policy, more than the leader of any public university, a Chronicle of Higher Education survey found.

A tenured faculty member on administrative leave, Spanier stepped down as president in 2011. He was later indicted on charges including conspiracy and perjury in what prosecutors said was a cover-up of ex-football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assault of boys. Spanier has pleaded not guilty in the pending case.

by Michael McDonald, Bloomberg Business

June 7, 2015 — 5:37 PM EDT Updated on June 8, 2015 — 11:52 AM EDT

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Caterpillar wins shareholder vote on executive pay

Shareholders of Caterpillar Inc. approved the company's executive compensation plan but a large minority voted against those policies.

A spokeswoman for the company said preliminary results showed 66% of the shares voted were in support of the compensation plan in a nonbinding vote at the company's annual meeting.

Proxy advisers Glass, Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., along with the union-affiliated CtW Investment Group, had urged shareholders to vote against Caterpillar's compensation policies. A CtW spokesman said the vote turned up substantial opposition to the compensation plan. Typical support for pay plans is above 90%, he said.

By James R. Hagerty, MarketWatch

Published: June 10, 2015 10:22 a.m. ET

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Corporations Are Going Green by Linking Executive Pay to Energy and Emissions Targets

Back in 2005, when GE chief executive Jeff Immelt launched Ecomagination, an initiative to pedal plant-friendly technologies to the market, he famously quipped “green is green.” But despite Mr. Immelt’s pitch, the conventional wisdom has stubbornly remained that what’s good for the planet is going to hurt in the pocketbook.

Things might finally be shifting. From the data crunched for this year’s Newsweek Green Rankings, we found an interesting trend within executive compensation packages that challenges this assumption. For instance, for the first time since we have been tracking executive pay-links to green, the majority of the 500 largest listed companies — both in the U.S. and globally — linked at least part of their executive bonus payout to green factors like energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. In the U.S., 53 percent of companies tie executive bonuses to green performance targets; globally, the number is 69 percent. A decade ago, less than 10 percent of companies linked pay to environmental factors.

-BY  TOBY A.A. HEAPS  6/4/15 AT 10:53 AM, NEWSWEEK

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