Based on the following headlines:

1. Boards Tie CEO Pay More Tightly to Performance
2. Outgoing executives still reap a profit
3. A Major Perk For Executives Takes A Big Hit

...you can conclude that:

1. Executive pay is going up
2. Executive pay is going down
3. Both "A" and "B"
4. Neither "A" nor "B".

Unfortunately, if you´ve read the three articles you´ll find you´re no better off trying to pick the correct answer to the quiz than by only reading the headlines. 

At a time when there is greater disclosure than even before of executive pay, leading to the appearance of more pay complexity, the actual complexity is increasing too. In other words, it looks more complicated because we know more about it than we ever did; at the same time, companies (and their lawyers) are making it still more complicated.

Here are the various pay mechanisms discussed in today´s articles, new and old:

1. Now, CEOs have to meet certain financial or other performance targets to vest in their stock options; before, CEOs just vested based on continued employment - they could make money if their company was performing poorly but the overall stock market rose. But, those performance targets might be slow-pitch softball and just be a giveaway in disguise.
2. Now, CEOs have to meet certain financial or other performance targets to receive their grants of shares; before under the "pay for pulse" system they could receive the free shares by merely showing up for work and not getting fired, regardless of how their company and their stock price was doing. (Apparently this showing-up problem was more widespread among CEOs than one might think.) Again, slow-pitch softball or major-league fastball, high and inside (but in the strike zone)?
3. Now, CEOs who get fired receive only a couple of years worth of pay; before, executives who do a poor job and "resigned for personal reasons" (you and I call that "getting fired") or "good cause" (you can´t fire me - I quit!) received several years worth of salary, bonus, options, and other forms of pay as a reward for their failure. It still seems like some people are getting a lot of money as a result of being fired for poor performance.
4. Before, CEOs could call a Wall Street investment bank and say "if you want my business then give me some shares in that hot IPO that´s about to happen"; now, this doesn´t happen any more and there are efforts to recoup the profits from some individuals that benefited from this arrangement. The CEO in the article is appealing the refund mandated by the court, however, because of some legal theories that I am in no position to comment on. The article implies that this might be "a sophisticated form of bribery" and let me be clear that those are the Justice´s words, not mine.

I suppose the theme of all of this is that there is a slow movement toward more integrity and accountability in executive pay practices. In the meantime, answering the question "how much is that CEO paid?" is going to get more and more complicated, even with new levels of disclosure.

The spring executive compensation season is just beginning. By the end of May, we will have seen more volume, and more complexity, of executive pay information than in any year in history. I´ll do my best to translate it for you in this blog, but on days with headlines like today I´m not sure how much help I´ll be.

So, what´s your answer? A? B? C? D?

Fred Whittlesey, Chief Compensation Officer
Fred Whittlesey joined PayScale in 2005 as Chief Compensation Officer where he leads PayScale's compensation data acquisition and analysis program with a specific focus on data demographics, database quality and continued refinement of collection methodology. He can be contact through the Paycale website: www.payscale.com