Democrats just can't help trying to demonize corporate executives

The Financial Times talks about the absurd consequences of Dodd-Frank Financial Regulations bill.

US companies face a “logistical nightmare” from a new rule forcing them to disclose the ratio between their chief executive’s pay package and that of the typical employee, lawyers have warned.

The mandatory disclosure will provide ammunition for activists seeking to target perceived examples of excessive pay and perks. The law taps into public anger at the increasing disparity between the faltering incomes of middle America and the largely recession-proof multimillion-dollar remuneration of the typical corporate chief.

S&P 500 chief executives last year received median pay packages of $7.5m, according to executive compensation research firm Equilar. By comparison, official statistics show the average private sector employee was paid just over $40,000.

Business sees the disclosure provision – buried in section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act – as a bureaucratic headache that may encourage false comparisons.

“We’re not debating the concept of disclosure – we think it’s a good thing,” said Larry Burton, executive director of the Business Roundtable, which represents chief executives of the biggest US companies. “But you can do more harm than good if you take a well-intended piece of policy and implement it badly. That’s the risk here.”

The rules’ complexity means multinationals face a “logistical nightmare” in calculating the ratio, which has to be based on the median annual total compensation for all employees, warned Richard Susko, partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb. “It’s just not do-able for a large company with tens of thousands of employees worldwide.”

Pay experts said business had been caught off-guard by the measure, which was not one of the high-profile battlegrounds of the Dodd-Frank legislation. Companies are now gearing up to lobby the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has to write detailed provisions for the new rule.

The rule could also reward with a relatively low ratio those companies that outsourced low-paid work rather than keeping jobs in-house, lawyers said. . . .

More on the new rules is here:

Lawyers caution that the formula mandated by the act has some seemingly perverse consequences, in terms of factors that will produce a low ratio – an apparent but potentially misleading sign of a company without excessive executive remuneration.

“It will favour companies that outsource and use independent contractors, and those that use franchised rather than company-owned stores, since these relatively low paid jobs will not count towards the median tally,” says Richard Susko, a partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb.

Many of the crucial factors affecting the ratio have been left to the discretion of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has to draw up the regulations to implement the new rule. The act does not specify whether non-US employees need to be included in the total, the treatment of subsidiaries and affiliates, the date on which the pay needs to be calculated each year or the exchange rates to be used. . . .

Also this:

The $1,025,000 median salary of an S&P500 chief executive last year, according to the Equilar analysis, is 25 times the $40,174 that official statistics show was paid to the average US private sector employee. The chief executive’s $7.5m median total pay package, including bonuses and stock options, is 187 times that average private sector pay and some 19 times President Barack Obama’s basic $400,000 salary. . . .