A new rule many CEOs are likely dreading is one step closer to being finalized at the SEC.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today unveiled a new controversial rule that would disclose the wage gap between CEOs of public companies and that of its workers.
The SEC was split on the proposal voting 3-2 on the rule that would allow anyone to see the pay gap between employees and the CEO.
CEO and named executive officers are already required to make public their compensation in annual SEC filings, but this rule would also require companies to calculate and make public the median pay of its workers.
That new disclosure isn't sitting well with many who say the new pay disclosure is burdensome.
Critics of the rule say collecting such data about employee compensation each year is overwhelming. For instance, they argue, global companies may have compensation administration in each country it operates in making it difficult and costly to gather the necessary information.
But the SEC's proposed rule today is somewhat less burdensome than originally planned.
"The rules proposed would not require a specific methodology, but instead would provide a company with the flexibility to determine the median and calculate the annual total compensation for that employee in a way that best suits its particular circumstances," said SEC chair Mary Jo White in a prepared remarks.
That means companies could come up with their own methodology to come up with the median pay. A company could use a sampling of employees rather than collect the information for its entire workforce.
Here's the pay ratio requirement from the SEC:
The median of the annual total compensation of all its employees except the CEO. The annual total compensation of its CEO. The ratio of the two amounts.But that's still too much information say critics.
SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher voted against the rule today saying the rule has "nothing to do with the SEC's mission and everything to do with the politics of not letting a serious crisis go to waste."
He added in remarks, "Gimmicks like these don't belong in corporate filings. The agency would sanction issuers who acted so "creatively" in other areas of their 10K or proxy disclosure."
However, proponents of the rule say the more information a company discloses the better. That's particularly true for investors who would now have yet another way to measure how a company spends its money.
SEC commissioner Luis A. Aguilar notes that large public company CEOs were paid an average of 204 times the compensation of rank-and-file workers in their industries. "By comparison, [the study] estimated that the average CEO was paid about 20 times the typical worker's pay in the 1950s, with that multiple rising to 42-to-1 in 1980, and to 120-to-1 in 2000," he says in his remarks.
CEO pay has been a hot issue since the financial crisis which drew greater attention to outsized compensation packages.
Since the crisis more shareholders, particularly those invested in big Wall Street banks, are paying closer attention to executive pay.
Rules like "Say On Pay" which allow shareholders to vote against pay packages of CEOs have received more attention.
AP, Pablo Martinez Monsivais WASHINGTON -- A potential federal shutdown looming, President Barack Obama on Monday warned congressional Republicans they could trigger national "economic chaos" if they demand a delay of his health care law as the price for supporting continued spending for federal operations. House Republican leaders were to meet Tuesday in hopes of finding a formula that would avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1 without alienating party conservatives who insist on votes to undercut the Affordable Care Act. Even more daunting is a mid- to late-October deadline for raising the nation's borrowing limit, which some Republicans also want to use as leverage against the Obama administration. "Are some of these folks really so beholden to one extreme wing of their party that they're willing to tank the entire economy just because they can't get their way on this issue?" Obama said in a speech at the White House. "Are they really willing to hurt people just to score political points?" The Republicans don't see it that way. House Speaker John Boehner, who opposes the threat of a shutdown, said, "It's a shame that the president could not manage to rise above partisanship today." Obama, said Boehner, "should be working in a bipartisan way to address America's spending problem, the way presidents of both parties have done before," and should delay implementation of the health care law. While some conservatives supported by the tea party have been making shutdown threats, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday that was "a dumb idea." At a community meeting in Louisville, he said, "We should fight for what we believe in and then maybe we find something in between the two. ... I am for the debate, I am for fighting. I don't want to shut the government down, though. I think that's a bad solution." Obama timed his remarks for the fifth anniversary of the bankruptcy of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers, a major early event in the near-meltdown of the U.S. financial system and a severe global recession that preceded his presidency. He used the occasion to draw attention to the still-recovering economy and to what he called a "safer" financial system now in place. He delayed his remarks as authorities responded to the shootings that officials said left at least 13 people dead at the Washington Navy Yard just a few miles from the White House. While unemployment has dropped to 7.3 percent from a high of 10 percent and the housing market has begun to recover, the share of long-term unemployed workers is double what it was before the recession, and a homebuilding revival has yet to take hold. A new analysis conducted for The Associated Press shows that the gap in employment rates between America's highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its widest level since officials began tracking the data a decade ago. Obama conceded the problems. "As any middle class family will tell you or anybody who's striving to get in the middle class, we are not yet where we need to be," he said. Still, his National Economic Council argued his case for progress, issuing a report detailing policies that it said had helped return the nation to a path toward growth. Those steps ranged from the unpopular Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, that shored up the financial industry and bailed out auto giants General Motors and Chrysler, to an $800 billion stimulus bill and sweeping new bank regulations. Of the $245 billion that the government injected into the banking system, virtually all of it has been paid back, the report noted. "After all the progress that we've made over these last four and a half years, the idea of reversing that progress because of an unwillingness to compromise or because of some ideological agenda is the height of irresponsibility," Obama said. He reiterated his stance that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling. Failure to raise it could lead to the first national default in U.S. history. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, say the health care law, which has yet to take full effect, will place a burden on businesses and the public and will damage the economy. As a result, they insist that it be starved of taxpayer money or at least delayed. Chances are fading for a complicated GOP leadership plan that would allow the House to also vote to "defund Obamacare" but automatically separate the measures when delivering them to the Senate to ease the way for quick passage of a "clean" funding measure for delivery to Obama. The next steps aren't clear, but one option under consideration is to accede to conservatives' demands to deliver to the Democratic Senate a combined bill that pays for government and defunds the health care law. The Senate would be virtually certain to strip away the attack on the health care law and bounce the funding measure right back to the House. That scenario might frustrate conservatives, with the funding measure probably gaining enough votes to win passage in the House and proceed to the White House for Obama's signature. Stopgap spending bills are usually routine, so the difficult path for the current one hardly inspires confidence for an even more important measure to raise the government's borrowing cap. Republicans want to use the debt limit measure as a mechanism to win further spending cuts on top of those they forced upon Obama two years ago. It's not clear how the debt limit conundrum will be solved, though a time-tested recipe would be to add mostly symbolic reforms like a "no budget, no pay" proposal that worked early this year when House leaders orchestrated a debt limit increase that was intended to last through July or so but is now likely to suffice until mid-late October. The idea was that lawmakers wouldn't get paid if the chamber in which they served didn't pass a budget. It was a House GOP jab aimed at the Senate, which hadn't passed a budget since 2009. This year it did but there's been no effort to reconcile it with a competing House measure. Obama intends to continue pressuring Congress with daily events this week, including a speech Wednesday to the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs from the top U.S. companies, and a trip Friday to Kansas City to visit a Ford plant, where he will promote the strength of the auto industry. 
By Jim Stack
AP, Greg Baker Earlier this week, I outlined some of the changes that are in store if the USDA's proposed new poultry inspection program is put into action. In a nutshell, consumers can expect more chemicals sprayed on their chickens, fewer government meat inspectors, and more bacteria making it into their kitchens. But, as it turns out, there's an even bigger change headed down the pipeline: The USDA is also planning to allow Chinese poultry processing plants to export chicken to the U.S. It's hard to overstate just how terrible an idea this is. To begin with, earlier this year, China had an outbreak of H7N9, the latest in a string of "bird flus" that have struck the country. The disease, which the World Health Organization describes as an "unusually dangerous virus for humans," is directly connected to poultry farming. The CDC, by the way, warns -- somewhat obliquely -- that you can in fact catch these viruses from infected chicken meat. As their website notes in its Q&A section: 
), but went on to lower its price target for the company.Deborah Weinswig, an analyst with the firm, noted that Target’s expansion into groceries and focus on improving store level productivity are all encouraging developments that support Citigroup’s current “Buy” rating on the stock. Weinswig, however, went on to add that the health of the U.S. consumer as a whole remains fragile and the company’s recent entry into Canada would likely hurt earnings in the near-term. As such, Citigroup lowered its price target on the company from $75 to $72 a share.