Investor 'Say on Pay' Is a Bust

This was supposed to be the year when shareholders at public companies finally had their say about executive pay. As a result of the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act last July, shareholders for the first time can cast proxy votes on top executives' compensation. Median pay of chief executives jumped 35 percent, to $8.4 million, for Standard & Poor's 500 CEOs in 2010. So shareholders' say-on-pay votes, although only advisory, were expected to widely challenge companies where compensation didn't reflect performance or were out of line with those at competitors.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), which advises investor clients on proxy and shareholder issues and is the largest firm of its kind in the U.S., has recommended nay votes on pay for 293 companies so far this year. Among them: Pfizer (PFE), whose ex-CEO Jeffrey Kindler resigned in December with a severance package valued by ISS at $34.4 million. Another is JPMorgan Chase (JPM), where chief Jamie Dimon was awarded a 1,474 percent compensation boost for 2010, to $20.8 million.