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Corporate Governance & Executive Compensation

Datasets and search strategies for locating corporate governance (Officers & Directors) and executive compensation information.

Business Databases

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General Corporate Governance Sources

Faculty & Graduate WRDS Corporate Governance Sources


Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS)
Access is available to current A.B. Freeman graduate students and faculty.  Users must request a login ID and password to research the following data sources:

I.  Compustat Execucomp 
WRDS-->Compustat-->Execucomp

Standard and Poors’ Execucomp provides executive compensation data collected directly from each company’s annual proxy (DEF14A SEC form). Detailed information on salary, bonus, options and stock awards, non-equity incentive plans, pensions and other compensation items are available.

Executive Compensation database contains over 2872 companies, both active and inactive. The universe of firms cover the S&P 1500 plus companies that were once part of the 1500 plus companies removed from the index that are still trading, and some client requests. Data collection on the S&P 1500 began in 1994. However, there is data back to 1992 but it is not the entire S&P 1500 – it is mostly for the S&P 500.  

II.  RiskMetrics - Beginning with data for 2007, data is delivered in four datasets identified as:  RiskMetrics Group Historical Governance, Historical Directors data, Voting Results data, and Shareholder Proposal data. 

The Directors Data includes a range of variables related to individual board directors (e.g., name, age, tenure, gender, committee memberships, independence classification, primary employer and title, number of other public company boards serving on, shares owned, etc.). This data collection began in 1996 and is updated annually. The current universe is the S&P 1500 companies, which has continued since 1996, although in earlier years the data was captured for a few hundred additional large-cap companies as well.

Voting Results Data, including (for years 1997 through 2006) all governance shareholder proposals and all non-routine management proposals (i.e., excluding director election and auditor ratification) for which we obtained vote results. This company universe includes all S&P 1,500 companies (as well as approximately 400-500 additional widely held companies in some years), generally covering between 900 and 1,200 companies each year (approximately 2,000+ proposals captured each year). This data set will NOT be further updated at this time.

Shareholder Proposal Data (governance and social responsibility) from 1997 through 2007. This includes proposals that came to a vote as well as those that did not (e.g., because they were withdrawn by the proponent or allowed to be omitted from the proxy by the SEC). Variables include the lead filer of the proposal, the meeting date, and outcome; some fields are not complete every year for every company, but the vast majority of meeting dates are present. This data set will be updated each year.

Company Website


See links to Investor Relations and Governance. Use a business database, such as Business Insight: Essentials to locate the official website of the company in a directory listing.

BLOOMBERG


BLOOMBERG
Available in Turchin Library on the 3rd Floor of GW 1 (Freeman School students and faculty only)

 
Enter the company's ticker symbol <GO>

Click on 1) Company Overview for a menu of Profile Sources. See Hoover's Handbook for a quick overview of company operations, key executives, and key competitors.
Also see: MGMT Company Management Profiles OR MGSN Management Snapshot

MGMT displays company management information about top-ranking executives and board members for a selected security, so you can analyze corporate leadership and see which leaders are driving performance.  MGMT is organized into a control area and a management details section.  Once you load a security, you can use the tabs in the control area to display different views of detailed information and profiles for past and current executives and board members.

Review other sources as needed.

See: Bloomberg: Equity Research & Analysis Cheat Sheet for further information and codes.

Exporting & Downloading

There are two ways to get Bloomberg data into Excel:

  1. Search directly from the Excel that is loaded on the workstation. Open up Excel first, click on Bloomberg, then import data. A new screen will open where you enter your data selections.
  2. Export from Bloomberg into Excel. This exporting capability is limited to certain data elements within Bloomberg. Not all data can be exported. When this function is available it will be listed under Actions OR Options- not export. Click on actions or options, then download to Excel.

Note: Further information is available on the Bloomberg Library Guide.

Thomson Reuters EIKON


For those with pre-approved access to Thomson Reuters EIKON through graduate classes or faculty research, use the following strategy to search for corporate governance data:

From the top menu, use the pull-down menu for Asset Classes, Equities, Stocks and enter the company name or ticker symbol.  On the company page, use the Officers pull-down menu at the top right to access:  overview, detail, people connections, and corporate relationships.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.