On June 19, 2020, the New York Law Journal published a column by the author regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on executive pay including employer adjustments to such pay as a result of the pandemic. Today's column takes another look at such consequences.

Pandemic Consequences to Executive Pay in 2020

  1.  Employer actions in response to the pandemic during the first half of 2020.

During the first half of 2020, many companies took actions to reduce executives' salaries. (For example, as indicated in the Stanford Corporate Governance Research Initiative study noted below, 424 Russell 3000 companies reduced CEO salaries during this period.) Most companies did not take steps to modify their annual and long-term incentive programs, which will generally be adversely impacted by the economic consequences of the pandemic.