Equal Treatment

In a discussion worth reading between 3 leading FTSE-100 Financial Directora discussing the burden of corporate governance, Ken Lever, FD of Tomkins makes the following interesting remark on executive compensation disclosure:

I have no particular problem - being the director of a public company - that my remuneration should be disclosed for all the world to see, so that my friends and relatives can see, and so that all the shareholders can see. The issue I have a bit of a hang-up with is that we don't see disclosure of remuneration of fund managers, for instance, and we don't see the disclosure of remuneration of people in hedge funds or, indeed, private equity. Equally, we don't see the remuneration of partners of major accountancy firms and law firms. I am all for disclosure, and all for making sure people get paid a fair amount of money for a good job well done if it applies generally across everybody who is contributing to this value-creation process in our capitalist society.

I think Mr Lever certainly has a point here: disclosing the salaries of those people is equally usefull to restore investor confidence.