CII's newly-released "Real Talk on Executive Compensation" uses paraphrases from a January 2018 executive compensation roundtable to summarize the views of the predominantly institutional investor participants (see roster on page 15) on various aspects of executive pay - including amounts, components, mix, complexity, transparency, and performance metrics. Among the overarching takeaways: aside from believing that pay is generally too high, investors have widely disparate views and standards on the ideal pay scheme that both satisfies their pay-for-performance expectations and incentivizes optimal behavior among management.
Notably, some participants reportedly suggested investors should make efforts to achieve a consensus view on executive pay design so as to effect change in executive pay practices; others advocated for board discretion to tailor pay programs to unique company facts & circumstances: "All companies are different, and yet we've seen homogeneity in the way they're structuring their packages, either because of investors like ourselves or proxy advisors' guidelines. I would like to see programs designed individually by companies."
Participants articulating their needs for greater transparency to assist their say-on-pay votes purportedly suggested investors collectively call on the proxy advisory firms to penalize companies for what they perceive as inadequate disclosure about performance metrics.