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- 2010-1-12
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[2010.3.13]Executive pay in America美国高管的薪资问题
倒数第三段翻译完之后有点不解了，既然大公司为了避免公开费用而雇用单独的薪酬顾问，为何这些大的咨询顾问公司的薪酬顾问又在逐渐失去顾客？
希望知道这个事情的译友们提供一下这篇报道相关的新闻背景，我百度不到 。
Executive pay in America
Cheques and balances
Efforts to reform how bosses’ salaries are set are unlikely to work
Mar 11th 2010 | NEW YORK | From The Economist print edition
美国高管的薪资问题
支票和权衡
要调整老板们的薪资标准不大可能奏效
SPRING is in the air, bringing with it angry thoughts about executive pay. This year the economic downturn is adding extra emotion to the season’s familiar fury. Unions are, for example, outraged at the $21m paid in 2009 to Sam Palmisano, IBM’s boss, not least because his firm laid off 10,000 workers in America last year. A union that owns shares in Goldman Sachs is suing to stop it paying bonuses to its employees. It wants the investment bank’s senior managers to shell out personally for the $500m charitable donation it made last year, which the lawsuit, filed on March 8th, describes as “an apology for taking enormous bonuses”.
虽然春意盎然，但是空气中却弥漫着人们关于高层薪资的愤怒。今年的经济低迷给这个季节人们再熟悉不过的愤怒再添新怒。例如，工会对于IBM老板Sam Palmisano2009年高达2100万美元的年薪出于愤怒，尤其是在IBM去年裁员10000人的情况下。高盛投资银行持有股份的工会意将银行告上法庭以停止给员工发放奖金。工会希望投资银行的高级主管亲自为其去年5亿美元的慈善捐款付款。在3月8日开庭的诉讼将其描述为“为拿高额奖金而致歉”。
Some boards and bosses have made concessions to the public mood. Jeff Immelt, the boss of General Electric, declined to take the cash bonus he was due for the second year in a row. His basic salary has not gone up since 2005, although his total compensation for 2009 was still a healthy $10m, 6.5% more than in 2008. Howard Schultz, the boss of Starbucks, opted out of the executive bonus scheme last year and asked for his basic salary to be cut from over $1m to almost nothing. But he ended up receiving $12m, after the board awarded him a discretionary bonus.
一些董事会和高层人员为缓和公众情绪做出了让步。Jeff Immelt, 通用的老板拒绝接受他本应连续第二年拿到的奖金。他的基本工资自2005年来就未曾增长，但是他2009年也总共拿到数额不少的1000万美元的薪资，比2008年增加了6.5%。Howard Schultz星巴克的老板退出了去年的高层奖金计划并要求将其100万美元的年薪降到几乎为零。但是，最终董事会奖励给了他1200万美元的自由裁量奖金。
There is even a new fad nicknamed the “pity bonus”, paid to bosses who failed to qualify for a big enough payout under the established bonus scheme due to the unforgiving economy. Mark Hurd, the boss of HP, was given an extra $1m bonus on top of the $15m he received under the firm’s annual incentive scheme to reflect the board’s view that he had not been “fully rewarded” for relative outperformance against competitors such as Dell. The board of BP, an oil firm, also awarded a discretionary bonus to Tony Hayward, its boss, after his performance fell short under the existing bonus scheme.
现在甚至出现了一种叫做“同情奖金”的时尚，用于发放给那些因为残酷的经济环境，在现行奖金制度当中，没能达到得到高额奖金标准的那些老板们。Mark Hurd，惠普的老板除了得到公司的每年刺激计划当中的1500万美元之外，还得到了100万美元的奖金，这表明董事会在这件事情上的观点，他虽然在市场份额上没能超过诸如戴尔的竞争者，但是他也没有得到充分的奖励。英国石油公司得老板Tony Hayward虽然未能满足现行奖金制度的标准，董事会同样给其发放了自由裁量奖金 。
Yet there are hopes that excessive salaries will wither this year, thanks to new rules rushed into force last month by America’s Securities and Exchange Commission. The proxy statements that American corporate giants are currently releasing contain the most comprehensive accounts ever produced of what companies are paying their top brass.
由于上个月美国证券交易委员会匆匆颁布的新制度，高层薪水今年有望减少。美国各大公司巨头发布的代理委托书包括了有史以来，就什么样的公司应该给其高层领导什么样的薪水最全面的规定。
At the same time, firms are being required for the first time to disclose the fees they pay to consultants on executive pay. In recent years most of the biggest firms in America have received advice on how much to pay their managers from consultants who also helped them manage pay and benefits for other employees. The fees earned for this broader advice dwarf those for the guidance on executive compensation (by about 11 to one, according to a recent congressional inquiry). That has given rise to the suspicion that the consultants tend to recommend generous pay cheques for bosses in order to curry favour with management and thus keep the other work rolling in. The disclosure rules are intended to highlight—and, with luck, defuse—this conflict of interest.
同时，公司第一次被要求公开其付给顾问的薪酬。近几年来，大多数美国大型公司都有薪资福利顾问，这些顾问帮助高层为其员工管理薪资发放，也给高层提供薪资发放建议。从给高层更广范围的建议中所得到的薪酬远远高于给高层薪酬指导中所得到的薪酬，根据最近一项会议调查，两者比例为11：1。这就让人怀疑这些顾问可能会给高层很高的薪酬建议以此来讨好管理层让自己从中受利。这项公开制度旨在强调利益冲突问题，如果幸运的话，缓解利益冲突。
The rules are already having an effect, although not the intended one. Disclosure of fees is only required when a board is advised on compensation by a consultant who also advises the company on other benefits. To avoid this requirement, many boards have decided to hire an independent compensation consultant, allowing the firm to continue to pay undisclosed fees to its benefits consultant for other advice. This has prompted a restructuring of the executive compensation industry, with significant numbers of consultants leaving prominent firms such as Mercer, Hewitt and Towers Watson. Ira Kay, a veteran compensation consultant who has left Towers Watson to start his own boutique firm, says, “I was losing clients due to the conflict-of-interest rules.”
这项制度已经产生了影响，尽管不是预期的影响。这项制度仅适用于要求那些薪酬顾问和其他津贴福利顾问为同一人的董事会公开其费用。于是为了躲避公开费用，很多董事会决定雇用单独的薪酬顾问，让公司继续雇用其他津贴福利顾问来让他继续给出建议。越来越多的顾问离开诸如美世、翰威特和华信惠悦这样的管理顾问公司，这就导致了高层薪酬行业的重新调整。Ira kay，一个离开华信惠悦的资深薪酬顾问开起了自己的时装店公司，他说“因为利益冲突规定，我的客户都渐渐流失了。”
Will this change actually reduce excessive executive pay? Don’t bet on it. “The new rules are a prescription to make pay go up,” argues Kevin Murphy, an economist at the University of Southern California. When he studied the relationship between consultants and executive compensation, he found that pay tends to be higher when a firm hires more consultants. Pay also tends to rise when the board hires its own pay consultant. Both tendencies are likely to increase under the new rules. Behind this counter-intuitive result may be the “mistaken assumption that the board will actually want to limit pay”, says Mr Murphy. In reality, he believes, consultants provide generous directors with “cover and comfort”.
这样的变化会降低高层过多的薪酬吗？不要期望太高。Kevin Murphy，南卡罗来纳大学的经济学家称：“这项新规定是让薪水上涨的规定。”在他研究了顾问和高层薪水的关系之后，他发现公司雇用的顾问越多，高层拿到的薪水就越多。董事会雇用其自己的薪水顾问，高层的薪水也会上涨。在新制度下，这两种趋势都可能上升。Murphy说到在这种非直觉性的结果后面，人们可能会错误的认为董事会真正的希望降低高层薪水。但是在现实中，他相信顾问会给这些出手大方的高层领导提供“保护伞和舒适感”。
Boards naturally believe that the person they have appointed to run their company is more capable than the average boss. Suggesting otherwise by withholding pay rises and bonuses would call their judgment into question. Nell Minow of the Corporate Library, a corporate-governance watchdog, may be right that “the only thing that will have an impact on executive pay is giving shareholders the ability to throw out board members who get it wrong. Disclosure is not enough.”
董事会自然认为他们指定经营这个公司的人比其他的资质平庸的老板要更胜一筹。但是如果不给这些人加薪加奖金则会暗示他们怀疑自己的判断力。政府监管机构的监管人员——政府图书馆的Nell Minow，可能是正确的，他说：“现在唯一能改变高层领导薪水问题的就是给股东们足够的权利，让他们把那些导致这一问题的董事会成员驱逐出去董事会。仅仅公开是不够的。” |
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发表于 2010-3-13 11:36
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