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School of Law

Corporate Law Lecture: Professor Jennifer Hill - Executive Remuneration in the Post-Crisis Era: Say on Pay and Australia’s “Two Strikes” Experiment

22 May 2013

Time: 6:00 - 8:30pm
Venue: Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Postgraduate Centre, School of Law, Queen Mary, University of London 67-69 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3JB

Jennifer Hill is Professor of Corporate Law at Sydney Law School and a Director of the Ross Parsons Centre of Commercial, Corporate and Taxation Law. She writes widely in the field of corporate law and governance, and has taught at several US law schools, including Vanderbilt, University of Virginia, University of Texas and Cornell.

  • This is a CPD accredited event.
  • This event will be followed by a drinks reception to which all attendees are invited.

Jennifer Hill is Professor of Corporate Law at Sydney Law School and a Director of the Ross Parsons Centre of Commercial, Corporate and Taxation Law. She writes widely in the field of corporate law and governance, and has taught at several US law schools, including Vanderbilt, University of Virginia, University of Texas and Cornell. During the global financial crisis, executive pay, which had previously been treated as solution to agency problems, re-emerged as a corporate governance problem in its own right. There was wide consensus that executive remuneration had, at the very least, contributed to the crisis, which led to a focus on regulatory controls. A wide variety of regulatory mechanisms have subsequently been introduced around the world, seeking to control executive pay and to ensure that it is commensurate with “just deserts”.

 “Say on pay”, which was first introduced in the United Kingdom and Australia following the Enron scandal, became a prominent international reform prototype during the global financial crisis. “Say on pay” lies across a broad spectrum in terms of regulatory severity. Switzerland’s recent reforms involving a binding shareholder vote plus criminal sanctions are, for example, far more stringent than the US non-binding shareholder vote under the Dodd-Frank Act 2010.

Recent studies in Europe and in the United States have expressed cautious optimism about the impact of the “say on pay” reforms in those jurisdictions. This lecture explores the structure and impact of Australia’s “two strikes” rule, where two consecutive negative shareholder votes on remuneration of 25% or more activates a director re-election resolution.

Against, this international background, Australia’s reform experiment offers interesting insights into both the possibilities and limitations of “say on pay”. The “two strikes” rule provides a lever for increasing board responsiveness to shareholder concerns, and may serve as a useful blueprint for other jurisdictions seeking to achieve their post-crisis regulatory goals in relation to executive pay.

How to Book

Book online via www.hilllecture.eventbrite.com

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