Watchdog presses SEC for CEO pay disclosure

A Wall Street watchdog is calling for federal regulators to finalize a rule that discloses how much money top executives make compared to their employees.

The Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) slammed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday for dragging its feet on the CEO pay disclosure rule amid pressure from business groups to scrap it.

{mosads}”One year ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule to implement a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act requiring companies to disclose the ratio of their chief executive’s pay to that of their median employee,” the AFR noted.

“Despite this overwhelming expression of support for pay ratio disclosure, the SEC still has not issued a final rule implementing the provision,” the group added.

The SEC received more than 128,000 comments on the controversial rule, which it proposed last September.

The AFR says the disclosure rule would provide the public with a way of measuring the “reasonableness” of a CEO’s pay. 

The rule is also backed by groups like the AFL-CIO and Public Citizen, but business groups say compliance with the rule would be very expensive.