Covid Effect: What the pandemic meant for CEO pay at Charlotte’s public companies

Originally posted by the Charlotte Business Journal | By John Downey and Amy Shapiro

It was a tough year for the region’s 40 largest public companies, but you might not be able to tell by compensation awarded to most of their CEOs.

Those companies’ aggregate net income plunged 26% from the year before as Covid-19 plagued 2020. The aggregate total CEO compensation for the 38 companies that had also been public in 2019 increased 18.5% over the same period.

Ya-wen Yang, who studies executive compensation as an associate professor at the Wake Forest University School of Business, says finding the balance for executive pay and performance has been challenging at the best of times. But in the pandemic, there are even more factors a board must weigh.

The board may want to factor in the nimbleness of a CEO’s response to unexpected events, she says. Where there is some discretion, boards may look to incentives to help right the ship.

“Every time when company performance or the economy is going south and CEO pay is going up, it is a hot topic,” she says.

Read more at the Charlotte Business Journal.