Corporate and Securities Law  

Search general business news sources, such as EBSCO Business Search Complete, for stories about executive compensation, and that mention activist institutional shareholders such as CalPERS, TIAA-CREF, union pension funds, and Vanguard mutual funds. You can locate other shareholder activist groups through the Corporate Governance web site.

Executive Compensation is described in three types of SEC filings:

• Executive and Director Salaries - listed in Form 10-K
• Executive Employment Contract Terms - in Exhibit 10, Material Contracts, filed with Form 10-K
• Estimated cash value of all nonslalary executive compensation, shareholder proposals regarding compensation - in Proxy statements

Search these three filings on LexisNexis:

• SEC Form 10-K
• Employment Contracts from SEC Filings
• Executive Compensation from Proxy Statements

Suggested searches: Search the filings of a company you are interested in. Expand your research by searching for executive compensation at other companies in the same industry by searching on the first company's SIC code. The names of executive bonus, stock option, and pension plans vary enormously, and searching for general terms such as executive pensions will not be effective.

Search the file Executive Compensation from Proxy Statements for the name of a shareholder activist group, the name of a specific shareholder initiative, or a specific type of compensation, such as bonuses, incentive pay, or stock options. When you have identified companies facing proxy contents, look up other filings from theses companies to get complete information on executive compensation.

The U.S. Executive Compensation Database: Boards and Committees reports salaries and total other compensation for officers of a company. (This database is searched with U.S. Company Profiles.) The U.S. Executive Compensation Database: Executive Biographies lists compensation for individual executives.