研究称限制CEO任职年限能遏制天价薪酬，减少股东损失

    现如今，相当明确的一点是，很多上市公司的CEO实际赚的钱比他们业绩确保他们可以赚的钱要多，而且，董事会常常忽视那些对此不满的股东。但给CEO支付比他（她，很少见）实际值得的薪酬高到底会对股东造成多大的损失？

    一份新的研究对这个问题的回答是：损失惨重。这份研究逐年核查了从1994年至2013年间1,500家美国最大上市公司的CEO薪酬、股价表现和资产回报。其中的任何一年，相对于薪酬适中的同行，薪酬最高的10位CEO掌管的企业市值平均损失了14亿美元。

    此外，即使其中某位特定的CEO的薪酬只有某一年入围过前10，随后的三年，这位CEO所在公司的股票价值都会相对同行业的其他公司股票出现下跌。而且，这份报告的联合执笔者、犹他大学（University of Utah）金融教授迈克•库伯还说，10位薪酬最高的CEO掌管的公司如果进行收购或合并，“市场反应更为负面”；相对于薪酬较低CEO的公司，股价下降幅度更大。

    “我们并不是在说，CEO高薪必定是糟糕的事情，”他补充说。“但我们的确发现，CEO高薪与公司财务表现下降之间存在明确的关联。”

    库伯称，主要的问题是，如此奢侈的薪酬引发了这位研究所称的“自负”，或者“自认为掌握了更好的信息，比其他任何人懂得都多”这种信念，结果导致了对风险的癖好。具体表现为：大肆收购、过度投资通常会失败的风险项目，而且通常也会过多支出公司的资金。

    库伯指出，“为什么任何行业中最高薪的CEO们倾向于做出损害股东财富的事情？这就是原因。”据这份研究称，有一个迹象很能说明问题，反映CEO的过度自信：被壮丽前景假象所迷惑的CEO通常比其他CEO持有更多“尚未执行的大量低价期权,”

    而且，他们在任的时间也比薪酬低一些的同行要长。库伯和他的同事发现，获得最高薪酬和做出最自负行为的CEO平均任职期为6年。“这一点没什么可奇怪的，”库伯指出。“更长的任职时间意味着CEO可以有机会与董事会结交朋友，或者把朋友安插进董事会。”

    这项研究中任职时间最长、赚钱最多的CEO们比同行们创造的财务业绩更为逊色，至少从一项指标表明如此：他们任职期间的资产回报率比所在行业的资产回报率低了12%。

    尽管库伯很谨慎地表示，这项研究的目的并不是要开出方子, 但它的确表明，设定CEO任期可以帮助降低失控的薪酬和代价高昂的自负行为。如果薪酬较同行高90%的CEO任期不超过（比方说）3年，股东的投资蒙受长期损失的可能性也更小。不过，眼下正在发生的情形似乎并不是这样：非盈利研究机构世界大型企业联合会（The Conference Board）今年4月份发布的一份报告称，2013年《财富》美国500强CEO的平均在职时间已经攀升到了9.7年。这是自2002年以来发布的最长平均任期。（财富中文网）

    It’s pretty clear by now that many CEOs of public companies make more money than their performance warrants, and that boards of directors often ignore shareholders who complain about it. But how much does paying the chief executive officer more than he (or, rarely, she) is worth really cost stockholders?

    Plenty, says a new study that examined CEO pay, stock price performance, and return on assets in a database of the 1,500 largest U.S. public companies for each year from 1994 to 2013. The 10 highest-paid CEOs in any given year presided over an average $1.4 billion loss in market capitalization, compared to their more modestly compensated peers.

    There’s more: Even if a given CEO made the top 10 for only one year, the stock lost value for three years afterward, compared to the shares of other companies in the same industry. And, if a company with a CEO in the top 10 made an acquisition or underwent a merger, “the market reacted more negatively,” pushing the share price down farther than for comparable deals made by lower paid CEOs, says Mike Cooper, a finance professor at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah and a co-author of the study.

    “We’re not saying that high CEO pay is necessarily bad,” he adds. “But we did find a clear link between high CEO pay and decreased financial performance.”

    The main reason, Cooper says, is that extravagant pay gives rise to what the study calls “overconfidence,” or the belief that “you have better information and know more than everybody else,” which leads to a penchant for risk—making too many acquisitions, over-investing in dicey projects that usually fail, and generally spending too much of the company’s money.

    “This is why the highest paid CEOs in any industry tend to do things that destroy shareholder wealth,” Cooper notes. A telltale sign of overconfidence, according to the study: chief executives with costly delusions of grandeur often hold “a larger number of in-the-money stock options that they haven’t exercised than other CEOs,” he says.

    They’ve often been in the top job longer than their lower-paid peers, too. Cooper and his colleagues found the highest pay and the most overconfident behavior among chief executives who had been in office for an average of six years. “That’s not surprising,” Cooper notes. “The longer tenure means a CEO has had more of a chance to make friends with the board, or to put friends on it.”

    Chief executives in the study who had held the post the longest and made the most money also showed more lackluster financial results than their peers at other companies, at least by one measure: return on assets over the course of their tenure underperformed their industries’ ROA by 12%.

    Although Cooper is careful to say that the study isn’t prescriptive, the research does suggest that setting term limits for CEOs would help to curb both out-of-control pay and expensive, overconfident moves. Shareholders might suffer less long-term damage to their investment if no one who’s paid more than 90% of his or her industry peers could hold the top job for longer than, say, three years. Right now, that doesn’t seem to be happening: The average time in office of Fortune 500 CEOs in 2013 climbed to 9.7 years, nonprofit research firm The Conference Board reported in April. That was the longest average tenure reported since 2002.