Equilar® Releases New Studies on CEO Accumulated Wealth and Compensation Consultant Market Share

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Equilar, the market leader for executive compensation benchmarking solutions, today published its latest issue of Executive Compensation Trends. This month’s issue includes studies on CEO accumulated wealth at Fortune 500 companies and compensation consultant market share at Fortune 1000 companies. Key findings include:

Fortune 500 CEO Accumulated Wealth:

• In 2006, the median value of total accumulated wealth for Fortune 500 CEOs was approximately $48.2 million. This includes pension benefits, deferred compensation, outstanding option awards, unvested stock awards and shares owned outright.
• Outstanding option awards typically represent the largest portion of accumulated wealth, and in 2006, these awards had a median value of approximately $15.2 million for Fortune 500 CEOs. Outstanding option awards include all unexercised service-based and performance-based options.
• In 2006, the median value of total retirement benefits, including accumulated pensions and deferred compensation plan balances, for Fortune 500 CEOs was approximately $7.0 million.

Fortune 1000 Consultant Market Share:

• According to fiscal year 2006 proxy filings, the Boards of Directors at 89.6 percent of Fortune 1000 companies retained the services of at least one compensation consulting firm. The ten consulting firms which appeared most frequently in these disclosures held a combined market share of 93.8 percent.

To learn more about these findings or to obtain a complete copy of Equilar’s compensation consultant market share study, please call 1-877-441-6090 or visit www.equilar.com.

About Equilar

Equilar, a NASDAQ strategic alliance partner, is the market leader for benchmarking executive and director compensation. Equilar enables corporations, consulting firms, law firms, investors, individual executives, and members of the media to accurately compare pay packages across public companies using SEC data. Equilar’s products include an award-winning suite of online tools for analyzing compensation and corporate governance trends and independent custom research services. Equilar's research is frequently featured in Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, CNBC, The Financial Times, Fortune, The New York Times, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and other leading media publications. Equilar is based in Redwood Shores, CA and was recently recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing businesses in America.