Director Pay Sees Modest Rise

As the economy struggles to recover from the recession, directors on the boards of America’s largest companies in 2008 realized modest changes in their annual compensation packages. And in an annual review of total director compensation at Fortune 500 companies, 2008 pay packages rose by a median of 3% from 2007 rates, a modest increase when compared to median annual pay increases seen in recent years nearing 10%, according to professional services firm, Towers Perrin.

Total remuneration for nonexecutive directors rose to $199,949 in 2008, up from $193,965 in 2007. While cash compensation rose by 5% to $83,875, up from $80,000 the year prior, falling stock prices brought down the value of equity awards by 1% overall from 2007 rates. For 2008, equity values in director pay packages fell to $103,963 from $105,000 in 2007. This decrease in equity pay reverses a trend of rising annual equity award values for directors over the past four years, when values increased at rates between 5% and 13% annually, reports Towers Perrin.

Towers Perrin analyzed the compensation for outside directors at 461 publicly owned Fortune 500 companies that filed their fiscal-year 2008 proxy by June 30, 2009. Data for these companies were then compared against the results obtained by the analysis of 462 Fortune 500 companies, as reported by Towers Perrin in 2008.

Posted by RecruitingTrends.com on October 30, 2009. Filed under Data Watch, Recruiting, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry