"Say-On-Pay": Back In The Spotlight This Proxy Season

If you've been reading the business news lately it's hard to miss the renewed focus on the "say-on-pay" resolution at annual corporate meetings in Canada. These advisory resolutions, which ask shareholders to support their company's executive compensation policies and practices first started to appear in Canada in 2010, when the major Canadian banks introduced them. As of late last year, over 140 Canadian companies held say-on-pay votes, including over 75% of the companies on the S&P/TSX 60 Index.  In contrast to 2014, when no Canadian company failed to receive approval of its executive compensation resolution, there have already been a number of well publicized "no" votes in 2015, which is why say-on-pay is again all over the business pages.