Chu, Jenny and Faasse, Jonathan and Rau, P. Raghavendra, Do Compensation Consultants Enable Higher CEO Pay? New Evidence from Recent Disclosure Rule Changes (September 23, 2014). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2500054 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2500054

“In July 2009, the SEC announced additional disclosure rules requiring firms that purchase other services from their compensation consultants to disclose fees paid for both compensation consulting and other services. This exogenous requirement dramatically increased both the turnover of compensation consultants and the number of specialist firms in the industry solely providing executive compensation consulting services. After the rule change, client firms that switched to specialist consultants paid their chief executive officers (CEOs) 9.7% more in median total compensation than a matched sample of firms that remained with multi-service consultants. Compensation consultants retained solely by the board are associated with 12.9% lower median pay levels than a propensity-score matched sample of firms with additional management-retained consultants. Finally, CEOs at firms that start hiring compensation consultants experience a 7.5% increase in median pay relative to a propensity-score matched sample. Overall, our study finds strong empirical evidence for the hiring of compensation consultants as a justification device for higher executive pay.”

• See also: “Turnover among the nation’s chief executive officers remained virtually unchanged in October as 122 planned CEO departures were reported, 1.6 percent fewer than 124 September, according to a report released Wednesday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. The October total was up 17.3 percent from the same month a year ago when 104 were recorded.  This marks the seventh month in which CEO changes outpaced the same month last year.  Challenger has now tracked 1,131 CEO changes so far this year, 7.4 percent more than the 1,053 departures announced in the first ten months of 2013…”