Alvarez & Marsal provides comprehensive consulting services to help your company strategize, design, and implement best-in-class executive compensation plans. Our team of compensation experts, attorneys and tax professionals brings a unique perspective to building compensation plans, designing them to be extremely competitive but also as tax-efficient to the extent possible. 

A&M offers executive compensation benchmarking, short- and long-term incentive planning, and deferred compensation plan design and management, among many other services.

Some of the most popular services include:

• Executive compensation benchmarking
• Short-term incentive plan design
• Long-term incentive plan design
• Employment agreement drafting and review
• Deferred compensation plan design and administration
• Executive compensation philosophy design
• Compensation discussion and analysis/Proxy drafting
• Compensation risk analysis
• Pay-for-performance analysis
• Internal Revenue Code Section 280G (i.e., “Golden parachute payments”) calculations and analysis
• Severance agreement drafting and review
• Share ownership guideline drafting and review
• Accounting and tax considerations
• Shareholder outreach
• Institutional advisor analysis

Designing Customized Executive Compensation Plans 

Skillful leaders are the key to a successful business, so creating competitive executive compensation plans should be a priority for any organization. Top executives know their worth. They also know the burdens that come with high-stakes leadership responsibilities. Compensation plans must be designed accordingly to attract talent and inspire executives to grow both financials and employee morale. 

When designing an executive compensation plan, businesses should consider:

• The proper balance of base salary, bonus opportunities, and long-term incentives;
• Non-compensation-based incentives that separate your company from others; and
• A structure that is fair, consistent, and logical across executives both vertically and horizontally.

At A&M, we help design tailored executive compensation plans by collaborating with human resources, executives, the Board and other key personnel in researching market data and performing historical analyses.

Understanding the Importance of a Well-Crafted Executive Compensation Strategy 

Many businesses overlook how tightly their executive compensation plan is tied to the success of their business. When you value, pay and incentivize executives, you give them the motivation to think big and achieve their potential. This ripples through every tier of your business, promoting a culture comprised of the best people, best offerings, and best working conditions. An effective executive compensation strategy elevates your business holistically.

What Makes Alvarez & Marsal Different?

A&M acts as an independent, strategic partner that will assist in developing executive compensation plans that will enable your company to attract, motivate and retain key talent. We have extensive legal and tax experience providing executive compensation consulting services to publicly-traded, privately-held, and not-for-profit organizations. 

Our objective is to leverage executive compensation to help companies achieve their goals and objectives by aligning the interests of management with the interests of shareholders. As a strategic advisor, we provide the resources, experience, and support to help our clients make informed decisions about executive compensation matters.

Why Should You Use A&M’s Executive Compensation Solution?

Our broad expertise in legal and accounting matters, and our tax-efficient approach ensures clients can have the utmost confidence in not only the competitiveness of and the value-driven nature of their executive compensation plans, but also the financial efficiency. 

• Tax sensitive: Our aim is to provide the most tax-efficient plans that meet the client’s unique needs while seeking to reduce tax liability if possible. 
• Broad expertise: Because our team of lawyers and tax professionals have worked together for many years, it’s more efficient for A&M to draft compensation plans than to send designed plans to outside counsel, which may be working off a template and not have the experience in the technical aspects of plan development.

Did you know?

During the pandemic, CEO pay was trending down for the first time in years, based on initial 2021 annual reports, but the gap between CEO pay and medium employee pay was widening. 

Source: Harvard Law School on Corporate Governance

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