2021年经济学人 疫情重创之下的美国CEO薪资飙升,那你呢?(3)（在线收听）

It is a phenomenon that extends well beyond chief executives. Superstars from J.K. Rowling, an author, to Cristiano Ronaldo, a footballer, also earn spectacularly more than their counterparts would have done in ages past, notes Alex Edmans of the London Business School. In such a competitive global market, high pay may be justified to recruit and keep the best people. Yet its merits are undermined when bosses reap the windfalls from extraordinarily good times, such as a stockmarket boom, but are spared the consequences of misfortune, such as a pandemic. As Mr Edmans puts it: “If you’re letting CEOs benefit from the upside, they have to feel the pain on the downside.” Boards tend to ignore that. Perhaps they, too, gain from perpetuating a system that keeps their own salaries high. For whatever reason, they threw around the pain-killers last year like smarties.

这样的大幅涨薪现象不仅存在于首席执行官行业。伦敦商学院的亚历克斯?埃德曼指出，从作家J.K.罗琳到足球运动员克里斯蒂亚诺?罗纳尔多，这些超级巨星过去的收入也远超他们的同行。如今的全球市场竞争激烈，以高薪来招聘和留住最优秀的人才也或许合乎情理。然而，当这些首席执行官们从股市繁荣等异常好的时期获取巨额收益，却也能免遭疫情等灾难带来的后果时，高薪的优势就被削弱了。正如埃德曼先生所说：“如果你让首席执行官们在行情好时获益，那他们也必须感受到下跌的痛苦。”董事会往往忽略了这一点。或许董事们也能从维持自己高薪的制度中获益。不管出于什么原因，去年他们把高薪的止痛药就像廉价的聪明豆一样到处投放。

Pliant boards are not the only problem. Pusillanimous investors are part of it, too. Until the pandemic, the average vote supporting management on say-on-pay proposals was 90% or more, says Semler Brossy, a pay consultancy. That’s a whopping approval rate. By contrast, CalPERS, America’s most outspoken public-pension fund, in 2019 and 2020 voted against more than half of them, usually because the rises were not justified by mediocre market performance. Things appear to be changing. MyLogIQ says that the share of companies in the S&P 500 that have failed say-on-pay votes so far this year is running at 6.1%, almost three times the level for the whole of 2019. Institutions claim that the issue has become more pressing because the “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose” approach to pay screams inequality.

善变的董事会不是唯一的问题。优柔寡断的投资者也得承担部分责任。Semler Brossy薪资顾问集团表示，在疫情爆发之前，支持管理层的薪酬决定权提案的平均投票率为90%以上。这是一个惊人的支持率。相比之下，美国最直言不讳的公共养老基金CalPERS在2019年和2020投票中的反对率过半，反对派通常以市场表现平平，涨幅不足为由。事情似乎在发生变化。MyLogIQ公司表示，今年迄今为止，标普500指数成份股中未通过薪酬决定权的公司所占比例为6.1%，几乎是2019年全年水平的三倍。机构称，这一问题已经变得更为紧迫，因为“正面我赢，反面你输”的薪酬方式加剧了不平等。