The new Democratic leadership of the U.S. securities watchdog has a message for Corporate America's highly paid executives: if your company screws up, your pay is at risk.
Clawing back compensation is shaping up to be a key part of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's agenda as it cracks down on corporate misconduct, raising the stakes for thousands of executives who could potentially lose millions of dollars in bonuses and stock sale profits.
That rule allows the SEC to force a public company's chief executive or chief financial officer to return bonuses or other incentive-based pay in the event the company restates its results due to misconduct. Gerald Hodgkins, a partner in the firm's Washington office and a former associate director in the SEC's enforcement division, said it was unclear why the SEC had pursued so few such actions, but that "perceived unfairness" was one potential reason.