Dive Brief:
- Many employers have been worried about the CEO pay ratio reporting rule for one main reason: Gathering data, particularly for global companies, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- The Journal, quoting Roger Brossy of Semler Brossy Consulting Group, reports that by their complex nature, multinational corporations must balance the data collecting mandated by Dodd-Frank against international labor laws.
- The accumulating complexity of how to report the data, which must compare CEO salary with that of the median employee pay, is another problem. Brossy explained that business requests for alternative ways to do it actually have made the task "harder."
Dive Insight:
Carey Roberts, chief compliance officer at Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc, which has about 60,000 workers in 130 countries, told the Journal that figuring out the median employee salary is "... a huge undertaking for us.” She also noted that the CEO ratio mandate is sapping resources that could be "better spent on more important issues."
Timothy P. Olson, senior corporate counsel at NorthWestern Energy, told the Journal that despite the fact that his company has reported its pay ratio for the past seven years, its formula for calculating the ratio would not work for the Dodd-Frank regulations.