JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

This thesis determines the state of recent developments in CEO compensation in the spirit of corresponding literature. Besides the literature review, empirical study provides further evidence on CEO pay-for-performance sensitivities in the US listed companies during 2007–2011 and containing Compustat Execucomp data of more than 33,000 CEOs from more than 3,000 companies. I build the regression similar to methods in a groundbreaking paper from Jensen and Murphy (1990a) and expecting positive and significant relationship between the change in CEO total compensation and shareholder wealth. My estimate of the pay-for-performance relation for chief executive officers indicates CEO wealth changes by $4.93 per $1,000 change in shareholder wealth. Role of the value of CEO stock holdings plays the most important role determining pay-for-performance sensitivity a $4.7 change in CEO wealth per 1,000 change in shareholder wealth. I also report CEO total mean compensation during 2007–2011 is $5,968,000 a year. The mean value of option awards have declined by 18% and median stockholdings have increased during the same period by 130%. Relatively high value of pay-for-performance sensitivity and CEO stockholdings may help other shareholders to solve the differing interests of their and CEOs. Besides stock rewards, other compensation methods are needed to minimize the effect of systematic risk. Relative performance evaluation RPE, could be used together with equity-based incentives but they are not widely used in US listed companies. However, further research is needed to determine how equity-based compensation affects on CEOs excessive risk taking.