Costs and Incentive Effects of Stock Option Repricing

Costs and Incentive Effects of Stock Option Repricing
Author: Ulrike Neubauer
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Does repricing of executive stock options, i.e. the practice of lowering the exercise price when options are out-of-the-money unfairly reward managers for poor performance and thereby undermine incentives set by the compensation contract? In a study that compares the pay package containing repriced option with an otherwise adjusted package it is shown that repricing is not more expensive to shareholders than otherwise adjusting non-option compensation components. However, the package containing repriced options provides significantly stronger incentives. Furthermore, a policy that constrains the board of directors from repricing does not have significant effects on shareholders' returns."

The Complete Guide to Employee Stock Options

The Complete Guide to Employee Stock Options
Author: Frederick D. Lipman
Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2001
Genre: Employee stock options
ISBN: 9780761533825

Numerous private and public companies offer stock option plans every year to motivate, retain, and reward employees. But implementing the right stock option plan can be a complex and daunting undertaking, without the proper guidance.The Complete Guide to Employee Stock Optionsunravels the mystery of creating a meaningful equity compensation plan for employees that is favorable for the business. Author and attorney Frederick D. Lipman describes in complete detail the legal, operational, and motivational aspects of developing a stock option program, whether it's for the new start-up looking to attract top talent or the venerable company looking for ways to reward its best performing employees. Readers will discover how to: * Understand the pros and cons of different option plans* Implement the right plan to meet the company's future plans* Motivate key employees with equity compensation* Minimize the risk of losing equity in a volatile market* And much moreThis book also includes useful information for employees who want to understand what their stock options mean and how to maximize their profitability. Complete wi

Consider Your Options

Consider Your Options
Author: Kaye A. Thomas
Publisher: Fairmark Press Inc.
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0967498171

This is the 2005 edition of the most popular book on employee stock options. It's a major revision from the previous edition, with new design, content and organization to make it even easier for employees to learn what they need to know about their equity compensation.

Too Much Is Not Enough

Too Much Is Not Enough
Author: Robert W. Kolb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2012-08-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199977127

The scholarly literature on executive compensation is vast. As such, this literature provides an unparalleled resource for studying the interaction between the setting of incentives (or the attempted setting of incentives) and the behavior that is actually adduced. From this literature, there are several reasons for believing that one can set incentives in executive compensation with a high rate of success in guiding CEO behavior, and one might expect CEO compensation to be a textbook example of the successful use of incentives. Also, as executive compensation has been studied intensively in the academic literature, we might also expect the success of incentive compensation to be well-documented. Historically, however, this has been very far from the case. In Too Much Is Not Enough, Robert W. Kolb studies the performance of incentives in executive compensation across many dimensions of CEO performance. The book begins with an overview of incentives and unintended consequences. Then it focuses on the theory of incentives as applied to compensation generally, and as applied to executive compensation particularly. Subsequent chapters explore different facets of executive compensation and assess the evidence on how well incentive compensation performs in each arena. The book concludes with a final chapter that provides an overall assessment of the value of incentives in guiding executive behavior. In it, Kolb argues that incentive compensation for executives is so problematic and so prone to error that the social value of giving huge incentive compensation packages is likely to be negative on balance. In focusing on incentives, the book provides a much sought-after resource, for while there are a number of books on executive compensation, none focuses specifically on incentives. Given the recent fervor over executive compensation, this unique but logical perspective will garner much interest. And while the literature being considered and evaluated is technical, the book is written in a non-mathematical way accessible to any college-educated reader.

The Pay to Performance Incentives of Executive Stock Options

The Pay to Performance Incentives of Executive Stock Options
Author: Brian J. Hall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 60
Release: 1998
Genre: Chief executive officers
ISBN:

Detailed data about stock option contracts are used to measure and analyze the pay to performance incentives of executive stock options. Two main issues are addressed. The first is the pay to performance incentives created by the revaluation of stock option holdings. The findings suggest that if CEO stock holdings were replaced by the same ex ante value of stock options, the pay to performance sensitivity of the median CEO would approximately double. Relative to granting at the money options, a value neutral policy of regularly granting options out of the money (Pe=1.5P) would increase pay to performance sensitivity by approximately 27 percent. The second issue is the pay to performance created by yearly stock option grants. Because most stock option plans are multi year plans, it is shown that different option granting plans have significantly different pay to performance incentives since changes in current stock prices affect the value of future option grants in different ways. Four option granting policies are compared and contrasted. Ranked from highest powered to lowest powered, these policies are: 1) LBO-style up-front options, 2) fixed number policies, 3) fixed value policies and 4) an (unofficial) policy of "back-door repricing." Empirical evidence suggests that (even ignoring the revaluation of past option grants) the pay to performance relationship in practice is stronger for 1) stock option grants relative to salary and bonus, and 2) fixed number plans relative to non-fixed number plans.

Employee Stock Option Compensation

Employee Stock Option Compensation
Author: Florian Wolff
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3322818497

Florian Wolff analyses how executives perceive their stock options and how their personal expectations and risk preferences affect the value they assign to them. He shows that stock options may be worth their money because people behave irrationally.

Option Repricing and Incentive Realignment

Option Repricing and Incentive Realignment
Author: Jeffrey L. Coles
Publisher:
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

We provide evidence that firms reprice out-of-the-money executive stock options in order to realign managerial incentives. A sharp decline in stock price, by reducing the sensitivity of executive pay to firm performance (delta) and, in many cases, increasing sensitivity of executive pay to stock-return volatility (vega), can cause managerial incentives to depart from optimal or target levels. Our results suggest that increasing delta does not appear to be a strong motivation for repricing. Rather, we find strong evidence that firms reprice executive options to reduce risk-taking incentives (vega) toward the target level.

After the Crash

After the Crash
Author: Yasuyuki Fuchita
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2010-08-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815704291

A Brookings Institution Press and Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research publication As the global economy continues to weather the effects of the recession brought on by the financial crisis of 2007–08, perhaps no sector has been more affected and more under pressure to change than the industry that was the focus of that crisis: financial services. But as policymakers, financial experts, lobbyists, and others seek to rebuild this industry, certain questions loom large. For example, should the pay of financial institution executives be regulated to control risk taking? That possibility certainly has been raised in official circles, with spirited reactions from all corners. How will stepped-up regulation affect key parts of the financial services industry? And what lies ahead for some of the key actors in both the United States and Japan? In After the Crash, noted economists Yasuyuki Fuchita, Richard Herring, and Robert Litan bring together a distinguished group of experts from academia and the private sector to take a hard look at how the financial industry and some of its practices are likely to change in the years ahead. Whether or not you agree with their conclusions, the authors of this volume—the most recent collaboration between Brookings, the Wharton School, and the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research—provide well-grounded insights that will be helpful to financial practitioners, analysts, and policymakers.

Pay Without Performance

Pay Without Performance
Author: Lucian A. Bebchuk
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780674020634

The company is under-performing, its share price is trailing, and the CEO gets...a multi-million-dollar raise. This story is familiar, for good reason: as this book clearly demonstrates, structural flaws in corporate governance have produced widespread distortions in executive pay. Pay without Performance presents a disconcerting portrait of managers' influence over their own pay--and of a governance system that must fundamentally change if firms are to be managed in the interest of shareholders. Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried demonstrate that corporate boards have persistently failed to negotiate at arm's length with the executives they are meant to oversee. They give a richly detailed account of how pay practices--from option plans to retirement benefits--have decoupled compensation from performance and have camouflaged both the amount and performance-insensitivity of pay. Executives' unwonted influence over their compensation has hurt shareholders by increasing pay levels and, even more importantly, by leading to practices that dilute and distort managers' incentives. This book identifies basic problems with our current reliance on boards as guardians of shareholder interests. And the solution, the authors argue, is not merely to make these boards more independent of executives as recent reforms attempt to do. Rather, boards should also be made more dependent on shareholders by eliminating the arrangements that entrench directors and insulate them from their shareholders. A powerful critique of executive compensation and corporate governance, Pay without Performance points the way to restoring corporate integrity and improving corporate performance.