With access to extensive data on executive compensation practices and trends, CAP is strategically positioned to deliver expert advice. We are in the forefront on technical issues related to executive and board compensation, and our team conducts regular proprietary studies on pay trends and compensation-design best practices. More importantly, in today’s ever-changing environment, we speak to what companies are doing on a real-time basis. Learn more about how you can partner with CAP to ensure your organization’s sustainable and profitable future.

Services provided include:

• Compensation Committee organization and support
• Compensation strategy development, including pay positioning and mix of fixed and variable pay
• Competitive market comparisons and benchmarking
• Design of annual and long-term incentive plans
• Regulatory compliance support
• Compensation disclosures and shareholder outreach
• Change-in-control benefits review
• Assessment of executive benefits and perquisites
• Communication of compensation programs
• Employment-contract development

Increased scrutiny from regulatory bodies and various stakeholders has emphasized the importance of establishing and adhering to, a clear process for making director pay decisions. CAP helps public and private boards recruit and retain directors equipped to steer their organizations toward a sustainable future with pay programs that are both competitive and defensible.

Although director pay data is tightly clustered and increasingly homogenous across public companies, certain design questions should be addressed with tailored solutions to ensure alignment between the unique needs of an organization and an evolving corporate governance landscape. CAP uses market analytics to advise committees on competitive and differentiating program designs that promote sound corporate governance principles. These processes include analyzing:

• Board recruitment and structure
• Comparator group director pay
• Chair and committee compensation
• Director pay limits
• Stock ownership requirements
• 
  

CAP also is uniquely positioned to help private companies on their director pay programs. With MLR Media (Directors & Boards, Family Business and Private Company Director), CAP maintains a proprietary private company director compensation and governance database.

Along with crafting customized solutions in our advisory role, CAP regularly publishes reports about director pay that peers and media outlets frequently cite. Learn more about CAP’s expertise in director compensation here or contact us for additional information.

Often, new and existing clients reach out to CAP for professional compensation expertise during transitions and when conducting unique transactions. CAP has worked with a number of clients to restructure compensation programs to support organizational changes, including:

• CEO transitions, management team changes and new board members;
• Mergers and acquisitions;
• Value-realizing event such as IPOs and spin-offs;
• New rounds of financing;
• Restructuring or turnaround situations;
• Integration of new business units; and
• Strategic shifts.

CAP also works with startups and high-growth companies to implement more structured compensation programs. Often, high-growth companies have understaffed or decentralized human-resource (HR) functions where talent decisions have been made ad hoc. CAP can help such companies formalize compensation programs to support growth, motivate key talent, and minimize HR “fire drills,” while working within organizational constraints, such as conserving cash.

Learn more about CAP’s executive transitions and transactions expertise here or contact us for additional information.

Incentive plans are foundational to motivating the senior management team to achieve the goals of a company’s strategic plan. Determining how to best measure and reward performance against these goals is key to designing effective incentive compensation programs that ensure proper alignment of pay outcomes with various degrees of success against the plan.

The current, high-visibility, say-on-pay environment requires companies to continually demonstrate the inextricable link between executive pay and company performance. Definitions of success will continue to evolve both internally, within companies and externally, among investors and other stakeholders.

Learn more about CAP’s expertise in helping compensation committees respond to these evolving expectations and maintain responsible pay programs with a strong performance orientation here or contact us for additional information.

Clients hire us to help solve specific compensation program problems. Problems with a company’s pay programs can lead to turnover, recruitment difficulties, demotivated talent, an entitlement culture, and poor returns on compensation expenditures. CAP has helped clients address pay problems, including:

• Transitioning to a performance-focused culture from an entitlement culture where bonuses were expected, and individuals did not understand how their actions affected company performance;
• Improving incentive-pay target-setting from a system based on an ineffective budgeting process;
• Adjusting incentives or sales commissions to match the level of performance achieved by key hires; and
• Communicating complicated incentive plans to help participants understand the link between performance and payouts, and the wealth-accumulation potential.

Learn more about CAP’s expertise in helping companies navigate unique situations and make performance-enhancing compensation decisions here or contact us for additional information.