The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation, Fourth Edition

The definitive guide to executive compensation—fully updated and revised to reflect today’s business environment

Executive pay is one of the most fluid, flexible, and important aspects of today’s corporate landscape, and an integral part of every company’s strategic business plan. The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation has long been considered the go-to guide to executive pay. Written by renowned compensation expert Bruce Ellig, the book is filled with winning strategies and techniques for structuring appropriate executive pay plans.

This updated fourth edition addresses important changes that have occurred from 2013 to 2019 in designing and administering compensation packages. In detail, Ellig discusses executive pay elements, including salary, employee benefits, executive benefits, and long- and short term incentives. He also examines the role of the board of directors and its compensation committee, along with the influence of the major stakeholders (most notably the shareholder).

The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation, Fourth Edition covers:


New rulings and laws, such as the 2018 Tax Act and recent changes in proxy statements required by the SEC

Changes in healthcare and pension requirements

Executive pay elements and contributing factors

The difference between current and deferred compensation, including statutory requirements

Various performance measurements of the income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement that are used in incentive plan payouts



The book also includes appendices of selected laws, Internal Revenue Code sections, IRS revenue rulings, SEC actions, accounting interpretations, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, selected books, history of CPI, DJIA, NASDAQ, S&P 500 Averages, and Social Security taxes, as well as a glossary with more than 2,000 definitions.The Complete Guide to Executive Compensation addresses a wide range of needs and readers. Consultants and in-house pay designers will find detailed examples (supplemented with over 400 charts and tables) to trigger their own creativity.Boards of directors and compensation committees will benefit from the definitions and descriptions of various pay plans and the conditions under which they would be appropriate. Executives will find valuable tools here to help them understand their own pay plans. This is an essential resource for consultants, legislators, in-house designers, approvers, shareholders, executives, and educators.Whether you’re an executive or a designer, approver, or administrator of executive pay plans, this welcome fourth edition of the classic guide thoroughly reframes the picture of executive compensation for the modern age.