Investors push 90 companies for say on CEO pay

By Joseph A. Giannone

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sweetheart U.S. CEO pay packages will come under greater fire at annual meetings in the next few months, as more than 90 U.S. corporations face resolutions from stockholders battered by the credit crunch and economic slowdown.

The targets are companies that overpaid their executives, or where pay was not in line with performance over the past three to five years, according to a network for more than 70 institutional and individual investors on Thursday.

The network, organized last year by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' pension plan and Walden Asset Management, said it had filed shareholder resolutions at over 90 U.S. corporations seeking a nonbinding, advisory vote on executive compensation.

The network wants executives to sponsor "say on pay" resolutions in proxy statements for annual meetings to be held over the next few months.

Annual meeting season begins in April and typically, shareholders start submitting resolutions in December and January. Proxies are mailed out in February and March.

"We are in the middle of a subprime mortgage crisis where some failing CEOs are walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars. That makes no sense, and we think giving shareholders a vote on CEO pay will help to stop it," AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said in a statement.

Among companies receiving resolutions were: Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N), Bear Stearns Cos BSC.N, Blockbuster (BBI.N), Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N), Coca-Cola (KO.N), Countrywide Financial CFC.N, Lexmark (LXK.N), Merrill Lynch & Co MER.N, Morgan Stanley (MS.N), Motorola (MOT.N), Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N)

Last year about 20 investors and companies began meeting on how to adopt "say on pay" proposals, which are more common among British companies.

Such resolutions were filed at more than 50 companies in 2007 and on average received more than 42 percent shareholder support, AFSCME said. The union group intends to make "say on pay" its top corporate governance priority this year.

The investor group also filed "say on pay" resolutions with Apple (AAPL.O), AT&T (T.N), Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), General Electric (GE.N), Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), Home Depot (HD.N), IBM (IBM.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Merck (MRK.N), Nabors Industries Ltd (NBR.N), UnitedHealth (UNH.N), Wachovia Corp WB.N and Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N).

(Reporting by Joseph A. Giannone, editing by Richard Chang)