January 31, 2006
If company executives were so proud of their work and the financial results that they had supposedly personally engendered and which consequently they believe completely justifies their earnings, they would not be so reluctant, or embarassed by the wide gap between their's and their employees' earnings, to publish their actual income and stock options.
While I agree with the principle behind the SEC action to have executive compensation earnings clearly stated, I fear that this will only hasten companies to disengage from the stock market and trade within the realm of private equity. With the push by companies, and this administration, to force people into the stock market to supposedely ensure their own finanical, health and retirement future, regardless of their ability to understand let alone manage their stock placements, disengaging companies would prove even more fatal to the ability of stockholders to ensure a finanical future based upon healthy, profitable stocks and not mediocre, low-performing ones. It is interesting that as more people enter the market, by force or by choice, companies are slowly but surely considering leaving the market - and full disclosure of executive compensation can only be one of the major reasons for wanting to avoid shareholder and regulatory scrutiny.
If private equity trading were somehow regulated too so that whether a company was held in private equity or publicly traded, information about the company such as its performance and executive compensation could not escape at least stockholder scrutiny if not public scrutiny, and then executives would be left with no option in either case but to publish their finanical compensation.