Eight years ago, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act piled huge new duties onto corporate audit committees. Now their colleagues on compensation committees are bracing to see whether they’ll suffer the same fate under the Dodd-Frank Act.
So far the answer isn’t clear. The Dodd-Frank Act itself does not spell out new expectations for compensation committees anywhere near as extensively as SOX did for audit committees. Instead, all eyes will be on the Securities and Exchange Commission this fall as it churns out reams of required new regulations under Dodd-Frank. Those rules will address new independence standards, conflicts of interest, shareholder say-on-pay votes, compensation ...