The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an online tool that lets investors quickly and easily compare compensation packages for executives at some of the largest companies in the United States, in yet another effort to demonstrate the usefulness of XBRL.
The Executive Compensation Reader, available at www.sec.gov/xbrl, allows investors to search for a company and then see the total annual pay as well as dollar amounts for salary, bonus, stock, options, and company perks for its top executives; investors can also compare those details against other businesses according to industry or company size. XBRL was used to “tag” that data, which is included in the summary executive compensation reports that are disclosed in company proxy statements. So far, the SEC has tagged the 2006 compensation data for 500 large companies.
