CEOs Face Pressure on Pay

CBS is reducing Sumner Redstone's salary and bonus, resolving an investor lawsuit from 2005. This won't be the last time companies scale back on CEO pay. Market and regulatory pressures are driving boards to take action. While this case was a definite reaction, a growing number of boards are reconsidering how they do executive pay. As I'm learning in preparing an article to appear in Corporate Secretary next month, there are a lot of ways that boards have unnecessarily participated in driving up executive pay. Now they're having to work their way back to more reasonable amounts - particularly when results for the shareholders just aren't that appealing.